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BV 4254.5 .N67 
North, Frederick J., 

Advent and Christmas sermons. 
by representative preachers 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/adventchristmassOOnort 


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ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS 
SERMONS 








ADVENT 
AND CHRIST 
SERMONS 


BY 
REPRESENTATIVE PREACHERS 


EDITED BY 


FREDERICK J.’ NORTH 
EDITOR OF “HARVEST THANKSGIVING SERMONS, ‘* COMMUNION 
ADDRESSES,” “LIFE’S BEGINNINGS,” ETC. 


NEW wy YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS SERMON 
vc 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


Preface 


Tue Publishers put forth this volume of Advent 
and Christmas Sermons in the hope that it may 
prove as useful as the previous volumes— 
Harvest Thanksgiving Sermons and Communion 
Addresses and that it may receive an equally 
gratifying reception. 

They have had several letters saying that the 
volumes already issued have been a source of 
inspiration, and expressing the hope that other 
volumes of sermons on the different Church 
Festivals might follow. The contributors 
represent all shades of religious opinion. In 
every case the familiar themes on which their 
discourses are based, have been treated with a 
clearness that must make the volume helpful 
to all who desire to keep abreast of modern 
thought on subjects of such supreme interest 
and importance to the Christian as the Advent 
and Birth of Our Lord. 


August, 1925. 


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CONTRIBUTORS 
Rev. Arcu. ALExanDer, B.D., St. John’s Wood, 


Rev. Water H. Armstronc, London Wesleyan 
Mission. 


Rev. M. E. Ausrery, M.A., Secretary of the 
Baptist Union. 


Ricut Rev. E. W. Barnes, Sc.D., F.R.S., 
Bishop of Birmingham. 


Rey. James Brack, D.D., Edinburgh. 

Rey. J. Gotprr Burns, B.D., Glasgow. 

Rev. H. C. Carrer, M.A., Cambridge. 

Rev. R. C. Giiiiz, M.A., D.C.L., Marylebone. 


Very Rev. W. R. Ince, C.V.O., D.D., Dean 
of St. Paul’s. 


Rev. T. A. Lacry, M.A., F.S.A., Canon of 
Worcester. 


Rev. Norman Macuzan, D.D., Edinburgh. 
Rev. Georce H. Morrison, D.D., Glasgow. 


Rey. Laucuiran MacLean Wart, D.D., Glasgow 
Cathedral. 


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CONTENTS 


PART I 
ADVENT SERMONS 


THE DIVINE IN THE HUMAN- - - 15 
Rev. ArcH. ALEXANDER, B.D. 

THE SHEPHERDS IN THE FIELDS - 27 
REv. WALTER H. ARMSTRONG. 

JESUS CHRIST THE FULFILMENT - 41 
Rev. M. E. AuBReEy, M.A. 

CHRIST’S CALL TO AWAKE seh trip ee 53 


Very Rev. DEAN INGE, C.V.O., D.D. 


THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM - - 
Rev. Canon T. A. Lacry, M.A., F.S.A. 


HE CAME TO SAVE a Ap we Pe a 777 
Rev. LAucHLAN MACLEAN Wartrt, D. D. 


PART II 
CHRISTMAS SERMONS 


A CHRISTMAS SERMON - - - : 
Ricut Rey. E. W. Barnes, Sc.D., ERS. 


AND O THE DIFFERENCE TO ME! - 107 
Rev. JAMES Brack, D.D. 


9 


CONTENTS—continued 


THE NAME WONDERFUL - - = = 119g 
Rev. J. GOLDER Burns, B.D. 


THE TWO CENSUS BOOKS - - e+ = = 135 
Rev. H. C. CARTER, M.A. 


THE PEOPLE WHO GREETED THE INFANT 
JESUS) Misa auer edie leet rm.) GTAG 
REV? Re Cs Girie MAL. D.C.L, 


NOPROOMEe <n teed ee ay tate 163 


Rev. NORMAN MACLEAN, D.D. 


THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD- - -«- 181 
REv. GEORGE H. Morrison, D.D. 


10 


THE DIVINE IN THE HUMAN 


By Arcu. ALExaNnpDER, B.D. 
St. John’s Wood. 





PART I 
ADVENT SERMONS 


“* Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast 
down, comforted us by the coming of Titus.” 
—2 Cor. vii. 6. 


The Divine in the Human 


WHEN we read these words with an open mind, 
trying to discount the familiarity that so blunts 
wonder, it is the great daring of them that 
impresses us. It is a tremendous thing that Paul 
is saying here, and as we stand beside him on his 
peak, like Cortes’ men, we may see whole new 
continents of truth swim into our ken. Notice 
what he declares—he begins with God, the 
infinite and eternal Being, Creator and Sustainer 
of a Universe which grows ever more vast and 
wonderful as Science spells out something more 
of its meaning—God the Father of all spirits. 
Pause for a moment and try to realize, however 
faintly, what we really mean when we say “God.” 
Let the mystery and infiniteness and awe of the 
very idea of God take hold of you. Almighty 
God! Who can comprehend the breadth and 
length and depth and height of what that must 
mean ? 

He is a God of comfort, says Paul. Well, 
you can predicate anything of such a Being. He 
is a God of comfort, says Paul, and He sent His 
comfort to me. And that is a different story! 


ne) 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


“Hold !”’ we are just going to cry, “ what right 
have you to presume?’’—when Paul proceeds : 
He sent His comfort to me, He relieved my 
anxiety, He answered my prayers, by the coming 
of Titus,—just a dear, personal friend of Paul’s 
own! Paul begins with the infinite God, and 
ends with his friend Titus. God and Titus ! 
What have these two to do with each other ? 

Because it is in the Bible, we don’t realize the 
daring, the fearless leap of faith that brings the 
Eternal down from the infinite heavens into such 
a thing as the timely advent of a friend. To get 
the shock of it, we need to say, as Francis ‘Thomp- 
son did,—‘‘ Heaven and Charing Cross.” 

It is the glory of the Hebrew genius that it 
makes bold to scale the heavens and bring God 
into man’s little life. ‘The Lord—what shall 
other nations say of Him? That He is great and 
high and holy, that He is remote and unknowable 
and unthinkable. But this is what the Hebrew 
says, and has taught the world to say after him : 
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” 

God revealing His comfort through Titus. 
Titus, that dear fellow, but quite ordinary man, 
being but the vesture concealing the infinite 
purpose and loving kindness of God! Either 
way, it is a revelation—to go up or to go down 
is a new vision of truth. 

16 


The Divine in the Human 


We seek for God, and cry “Oh, that I knew where 
I might find Him!” And, behold! He is beside us 
—in Titus. We look at our Titus, and think of all 
that we owe to his friendship and trust and 
charity, and he vanishes, and we are gazing 
upwards and saying : “ We thank Thee, O God.” 
No man hath seen God at any time. The 
very idea of what God is, is too high for us ; we 
Bernce attain unto it. Yet we have in us a 
divine hunger to find Him; we are restless till 
we rest in Him. But there are scores and scores, 
in this age of ours, searching, listening within for 
some magical unearthly voice, peering all up and 
down life for a glimpse of some naked, patently 
supernatural fact, and, confessing sadly that there is 
no sign of Him to be found. They see Nature and 
Beauty and Truth ; they see life and men, women, 
and children ; they see their love and loyalty and 
sacrifice, their sympathy, patience and toil; but the 
naked, self-evidencing fact of God they never see. 
And to these, Paul’s truth comes like a new 
Gospel. You are looking too high, it says to 
them. Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing 
up into Heaven? Look down, look around you ! 
There is Titus, your friend, at your side: Titus 
to whom you owe so much. See in him God’s 
comfort to you. Look for the divine in the 
human. Realize that your most spiritual treasure 
17 B 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


look upon the bare fact of God and live—but He 
comforts us by the coming of Titus. 

If only we saw all our ordinary life with Paul’s 
eye, every common bush would be afire with 
God. For if He were in such a prosaic happen- 
ing as the arrival of Titus, what is there in 
our lives that is too insignificant, too purely 
human and ordinary to have concealed in it God’s 
purpose of love and blessing for us ? If God was 
in the coming of Titus—then we are just wrapped 
round with His purpose ; and He touches and calls 
and comforts and heals and helps us every day. 

As you ponder it, this truth opens out illimit- 
ably in all directions, For instance, it gives us a 
larger doctrine of Providence. 

There are some who look back on their lives 
and say there is no Providence visible. No 
angel with drawn sword, perhaps, no writing in 
the sky. But that is not how God’s Providence 
reaches us. It comes by Titus, our friend. It 
is by human voices that we know and love, by 
books that we read, that God speaks to us. It 
is by the material disabilities and limitations we 
complain of that He guides our feet. When the 
Lord speaks His word of hope or comfort to us, 
unless we have learned Paul’s wisdom, we may, 
like Mary, “suppose Him to be the gardener.” 

18 


! 


is contained in an earthen vessel. We could not 


The Divine in the Human 


When you think back on what moved you to 
some fateful decision, you may be able to account, 
as you imagine, for every link in the chain. It 
is all natural, ordinary, human. And yet God 
can be in it, is in it for certain, or there is no 
Providence at all. A mishap at a pauper’s 
funeral, and the unfeeling laughter of some 
officials, set young Astley Cooper thinking many 
years ago. ‘There is nothing obviously of God 
about that. Yet that was what turned him into 
the Lord Shaftesbury of later days, with a heart 
aflame to right social wrongs. Ordinary? Yes, 
Human? Yes. Just Titus; and yet God, 
too, behind Titus. 

One of the greatest of the Hebrew prophets 
said of God: “Verily Thou art a God that hidest 
Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.” And we 
all assent. Clouds and darkness are about Him. 
We do not see Him, we never see Him, we only 
see Titus. But this Scripture is written for us 
that we may learn to believe that behind our 
friend or our unexpected gift or our closed door, 
there is the Providence of the Father in Heaven. 


Back of the loaf is the snowy flour, 
Back of the flour, the mill ; 

Back of the mill is the wheat and the shower, 
And the sun and the Father's Will. 


19 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


We find in our text, too, a larger doctrine 
of Inspiration. Those who are living the God- 
ward life, in the faith of Jesus, hope and pray, 
and now and then may even see, that they are 
learning, growing in grace, increasing in the 
knowledge of God. It may be very slow, so 
slow that only by measuring by years can it be 
detected. But it is real. They are being nur- 
tured, taught, illumined by what they call their 
“means of grace.” But what are these? Books, 
Nature, Poetry, Art, Music ; their children, their 
homes, sicknesses and daily work. And the big 
common ones: Prayer, Worship and the Bible. 
But God is not visible anywhere there. He hides 
Himself behind our means of grace. Even in 
the Sacraments of the Church or of common life 
He is hidden and His glory veiled ; so that we 
need the eye of faith to be able to see that it was 
God who comforted and helped and taught us 
by the reading of some book, or a quiet talk with 
a friend. 

With this thought to guide us, we can lay full 
and frank emphasis on the humanness of these 
books that make up our Bible. They were 
written as other books are written, they have a 
definite historical place and purpose, and they 
have suffered the vicissitudes of other books. 
We can lay that emphasis without apology, and 

20 


The Divine in the Human 


yet, guided by Paul’s thought, we can under- 
stand how they have been used by God, and how 
He is behind them, and has a purpose in them, 
and speaks through them. And when some word 
there finds me, and my heart burns within me, 
I am not content to express my debt to Isaiah or 
St. Paul. For it pleased God to give me for my 
comfort or enlightening this word of Isaiah or 
Paul—it pleased God, and my thanks are due to 
Him. 

But, best of all, this line of thought opens out 
for us a worthy and welcome doctrine of the 
Incarnation. The place of Jesus in our thought 
is witnessed to by the mere fact that we are met 
here to worship the Infinite and eternal God in the 
light and truth of Jesus, and in His Name. It is 
in the face of Jesus that we have seen the glory 
of God. All that we know of God, all that is 
precious and personal; all that draws us to Him 
and moves us to trust ourselves to Him, body, 
soul and spirit, for this life and the next; all that 
we know of His forgiveness, patience and love— 
all that, we have got from Christ and through 
Him. There is no other name to be named be- 
side His. There is no title or honour, too 
august or divine, to express our sense of what 
Jesus is as Redeemer and Lord, the Bearer of 
the Good News, Himself the Gospel to men. 

21 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


But, when we sit down to read the story of His 
life on earth, how He grew in wisdom and stature, 
and was made perfect through suffering; how He 
was tempted in all respects like as we are, yet 
without sin ; when we watch Him as He walks 
through these pages of the Gospel from the 
Carpenter’s bench to the Cross, it is the true and 
perfect humanity of our Lord which draws us to 
Him. If we could have seen Him, there was 
no nimbus above His head, no cohort of angels 
to guard Him as Heaven’s beloved Son. He 
lived a Man among men, that Simon the Pharisee 
could insult, and Roman soldiers could mock and 
scourge and crucify. A Man. ‘The Son of 
Man. Behold the Man ! 

Yet—and the word again is Paul’s—God was 
in Him reconciling the world unto Himself. Here 
is the best and greatest of all the treasures of God 
bestowed on men, and it, too, is in an earthen 
vessel. Even in Jesus we do not see the naked 
supernatural, the unveiled Divine. The glory 
of God is hidden in the life and character, in the 
love and sacrifice of a sinless Son of Man, 

We have no category of reality higher than 
manhood. With these present faculties of ours, 
we can reach no higher in actual knowledge. 
Weare aware of God. We live our lives in Him, 
but we cannot conceive Him. We speak of 

22 


The Divine in the Human 


angelic beings, but we cannot imagine what they 
are hike; and when we paint them, we make them 
men and women with wings, because manhood 
is our highest category of reality in the realm of 
actual knowledge. 

Therefore, and on that word the whole message 
of Advent seems to turn, therefore, the very Love 
of God Himself came among us as a Man; 
therefore, God is seeking and calling and judging 
us in the Man, Christ Jesus; therefore, the 
infinite and eternal Father, that He may win the 
love and trust of His heedless, wilful children, goes 
all the length that even Love can go, and gives 
Himself to them in the Man, Jesus Christ, of 
Nazareth and Calvary. It is of one texture, 
woven throughout. It is God’s way in every 
sphere, right up to the highest. He is a God 
who hides Himself. He sent Paul His comfort 
by the coming of Titus. That, on the plane of 
daily Providence; and on the topmost peak and 
summit of His grace, this—that the Father sends 
you and me and all men His salvation, His Love, 
His very Self in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of 
Man, for Whose coming among us as a little 
helpless Child, the Church is keeping again, in 
memory, her Advent-watch. 


23 





THE SHEPHERDS IN THE FIELDS 


By Wa tter H. ARMSTRONG 


London Wesleyan Mission, 


““ There were in the same country shepherds abiding 
in the field, keeping watch over their flock by 
night,” etc.—Luke ii, 8-20. 


The Shepherds in the Fields 


Ir is a fact of great significance that the intima- 
tions concerning the advent of Jesus were given 
both to wise men from the East, and to shepherds 
_ in the fields. For Christianity is not a class-religion, 
like some of the esoteric religions of old, or like 
some of the fanciful cults of to-day. The 
Gospel of Jesus, though coming from the Orient, 
has no sympathy with the caste system so charac-! 
teristic of the East, and is entirely opposed to the 
jclass-warfare so loudly proclaimed by some in 
the West. ‘The Magi were the scientists of their 
day, whilst the shepherds were amongst the poor- 
est, and possibly the most despised of the people, 
The fact, therefore, that intimations of the 
advent of Jesus were given to both the cultured’ 
and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, conveys,’ 
even at the very outset, an underlying suggestion 
of the Catholicity of the Christian Gospel, and 
the relationship of the Holy Child to the human 
race in all its varying conditions. To those 
capable of bringing costly offerings of gold, 
frankincense and myrrh, were the good tidings 


27 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


\revealed ; whilst those who could bring nothing 
but the adorations of their hearts received the 
igracious revelation also. Most fitting was this 
introduction for a Gospel which was to be for all 
people. 

It is also very significant that the intimations 
of the birth of Jesus were so different in the ways 
‘they were communicated, the Magi being guided 
to the manger by a star, whilst the shepherds 
had direct information from an angelic voice. 
Herein is suggested the remarkable adaptation 
of Christianity to all people. There is always 
more than one way of proclaiming Jesus to the 
world. There are many roads to Him. The 
Gospel ever comes to us with revelations fitted 
to our growth and shape of mind, and with 
adaptations to the ever-varying conditions and 
needs of life and thought. No single stereotyped 
method of announcing Jesus was employed at 
His Incarnation, and none should be insisted on 
in proclaiming Him to-day 

Christ was born in Bethlehem. And at the 
same time “ There were in the same country 
shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch 
over their flock by night.” They were occupied 
‘with their ordinary tasks. There was nothing 
to suggest that this particular night was likely 
‘to be different from any other night. These 

28 


| The Shepherds in the Fields 


humble shepherds had no expectations of the ex- 
_traordinary, no visions of open heavens and 
angelic glory. 
These shepherds on the lawn, 
Or ere the point of dawn, 
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row. 
Full little thought they than 
That the mighty Pan 
Was kindly come to live with them below. 
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep, 
Was all that did their silly thoughts 
so busy keep. 


Yet the extraordinary happened. In the midst 
of that quiet night came an angelic visitor an- 
nouncing to them the greatest tidings ever heard 
by human ears: “ Unto you is born this day 
in the city of David, a Saviour, Who is Christ 
the Lord.” Then, a fitting climax to such an 
sannouncement, “ there appeared a multitude of the 
‘heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory toGod 
in the highest, on earth peace, good will to men.” 

What have we in this age to say about these 
things which happened on that first Christmas 
morn? Doubtless there are those who smile 
with disdain, regarding the whole of that story 
as a product of disordered imagination; but 
this kind of imagination hears not such music 


29 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


as these shepherds heard, nor does it produce 
such lasting effects on life. There are more 
things in heaven, and on earth, than any known 
laws of nature can adequately explain. The 
progress of scientific knowledge does not destroy 
wonder. It simply reveals a bigger and a more 
remarkable world, where marvels and mysteries 
abound. But underlying all the various methods 
employed there is this great fact: It is the 
communication of the knowledge of the Divine by 
revelation. While shepherds were in the fields 
an angel appeared unto them. This is one of 
many indications that the highest truths are not 
discovered, but are revealed. In the realm of the 
Spirit we owe far more to revelation than to 
investigation. “‘ Can’st thou by searching find 
out God?’’ Certainly we cannot discover much 
concerning Him. It has been said that history 
is the record of man’s search after God, but it is 
surely far more the record of God’s labour to 
make Himself known to men. This has been 
done by way of revelation: “‘ The word of the 
Lord came unto me.” “ And it came to pass that 
in the breaking of bread He made Himself 
known unto them.” These new thoughts of 
God, of life, of duty, of heaven—how frequently 
they come to us through angelic voices, through 
inspirations of the Eternal Spirit. The heavens 


30 





The Shepherds in the Fields 


are opened to us by a divine hand, and we are 
given a vision of Eternal Glories. How great 
a part revelation has played in enlarging our 
ideas of God and of the soul, none can tell ; 
but the occasional opening of the heavens such 
as these shepherds witnessed has brought much 
glory to the earth. Nor ought there to be any 
suggestion that revelation and reason are opposing 
forces. It is possible to believe in both and 
recognize the services of both. Reason gropes 
its way from below upward towards the light ; 
_Tevelation withdraws the curtain from above, 

and bids us look on the things which eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered 
into the heart of man to conceive, but which 
God reveals by His Spirit. When we think of 
the effect of revelation on the lives of such men 
as Moses, Isaiah, Paul and Peter, we are con- 
strained to believe, as Dinah Morris, in Adam Bede, 
says, “ That our greatest thoughts and noblest 
impulses are given to us.” 

Are angelic voices never heard by us to-day ? 
Do our ears never listen to the music of the 
heavenly hosts? That invisible choir, whose 
music is the gladness of the world: does it render its 
| anthems to a heedless world? God is not dumb, 
that He should speak no more. Surely some- 
times, like the shepherds in the fields, like the 


31 


rae 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


wise men studying the spacious firmament on 
high, or in some other way, the heavens are 
opened to us, and our souls are stirred within us 
as God reveals His presence. For the angels 
still sing, and we can, if only we will, hear the 
music of their songs. It is only the noise of 
confusion, the clash of tongues, the din of war, 
and the clamour of self which prevent our hear- 
ing the heavenly strains. 
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife, 
And hear the angels sing. 
“Be still and know that I am God.” 

But the songs are soon over. Revelations 
come and go. Like opportunities, they quickly j 
pass. ‘Thus was the experience of the shepherds. | 
The angels withdrew from view. The glory : 
departed as the heavens resumed their normal 
aspect. What then? ‘“‘ When the angels had 
gone away, the shepherds said, Let us now 
go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing” 
which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made 
known unto us.” | 

They went to verify the revelation. They set f 
forth to see whether what the angel had declared 
to have happened was actual fact. They meant 
to see for themselves the Holy Child, Jesus. 
To them that first Christmas Day was to be 
not only a revelation of glad tidings from 


32 


The Shepherds in the Fields 


heaven, but a verification by themselves of the 
truth revealed. True they were only shepherds, 
but they were wise shepherds, and right early 
caught the spirit of Christianity. For the Gospel 
does not merely invite us to listen, it bids us 
verify its claims, to “ prove all things, and hold 
fast that which is good.” 

The angels of God do not remain for ever. 
They come and go. It is for our benefit that 
they arrive, and for our benefit that they depart. 
The high seasons of the Spirit, the festivals of 
the soul are only occasional, never permanent. 
And well for us that this is so. A scientific 
writer, describing his mountaineering experiences, 
tells us that though the views from the heights 
are at first most glorious and highly enthralling 
to the emotions, yet a prolonged stay on 
the mountain top has a further curious effect. 
The mind becomes bewildered, the sensations 
confused, and all the natural powers seem to lose 
their normal functions. And the only way to 
restore the equilibrium of things, declares this 
writer, is to get back to the ordinary haunts of life 
again. ‘That is equally true in the experiences 
of the spirit. The very revelations given for 

_ the soul’s exaltation may easily become factors 
of spiritual paralysis. Conventions, for the 
_ deepening of the spiritual life will, if unduly 


33 c 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


prolonged, snare the soul into destruction. It 
is good to have retreats for the soul, but it is 
fatal to make habitations of such retreats. God 
invites us all to ‘‘ Lift up our eyes on high,” but 
when the star-gazing lasts too long, angelic 
messengers are sent, as they were to the Apostles, 
with the rebuke: “ Ye men of Galilee, why stand 


ye gazing up into heaven?” Every day is not © 


a Christmas Day, and ought not to be. These 
shepherds of old set us all a fine example. When 
the angels had departed they went forth on their 
journey, staying not till they saw the Holy 
Child. Revelation always involves a commission. 
Every impression is to have an expression. 
When God gives a vision, the opportunity for mak- 
ing it actual is generally at our very door, as in 
the case of Peter on the housetop, when ‘‘ While 
thinking on what the vision might mean, the 
Spirit said unto him, Behold three men seek 
thee.” It is always when the angels have de- 
‘parted that the real test of faith comes. Many 
4see the star, but never let it lead them to Bethle- 
them. Many hear angelic voices announcing 
glad tidings, but never verify in their own lives 
the revelation made. They hear of Jesus, but 


never seek Him. To their everlasting loss they — 


*do not trouble to make the journey in order to 
see this thing which has come to pass. 


34 


The Shepherds in the Fields 


“And the shepherds returned, glorifying and 
praising God for all the things that they had heard 
and seen as it was told unto them.” There is always 
the return to life’s ordinary duties and experiences. 
Rarely does the discovery of the Christ involve 
any sweeping change in the daily life and its 
tasks. What it does involve is a new spirit with 
a fresh outlook. These shepherds went back 
to their accustomed duties, they returned to the 
care of their sheep. But life for these shepherds 
could never be the same again. ‘There was a 
fresh glory in it. They had passed through an 
experience which would forever have its influence 
upon them, an experience of which they could 
never be dispossessed. They had seen the Christ 
and oh, the difference to them for all time. 

We, too, have to return to life’s duties, many of 
us to the trivial round and the common tasks. 
But festal days should have their influence on the 
other days of our pilgrimage. What of this 
great day of festivity—this Christmas Day? 


“We ring the bells, and we raise the strain, 
We hang the garlands everywhere, 
And bid the tapers twinkle fair; 
And feast and frolic—and then we go 
Back to the same old lives again.” 


Is that to be true of us? Not if we have seen 
35 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


the Christ. And the real Christmas Day for any 
man is when Jesus is born in the heart. That 
day he can never forget. The great miracle of 
the Incarnation is repeated in his own life. The 
day passes, but not the experience. He becomes 
a new creation. Old things pass away, and all 
things become new. 


“ Heaven above is softer blue, 
Earth beneath is sweeter green; 
Something lives in every hue, 
Christless eyes have never seen ; 
Birds with sweeter songs o’erflow, 
Flowers with richer beauties shine, 
Since I know, as now I know, 
Iam His, and He is mine.” 


The entrance of Jesus always enriches and 
enlarges life. It brings heaven and earth into 
contact, to the glorification of both. Sir Walter 
Scott was once asked, where is the finest scenery 
in Scotland, in the Highlands or in the Lowlands ? 
He replied that it was in neither, and declared 
that the finest Scottish scenery was where the 
Highlands and the Lowlands met. The finest 
life is that where the highlands of vision and 
inspiration glorify the needs and tasks of the 
lowlands of ordinary routine. 

Our greatest need in this age is to visit 
Bethlehem and see the Christ for ourselves, to 


36 


The Shepherds in the Fields 


bow with adoring wonder to that Holy Child Who 
was sent for the rising and falling of many. 
Angel voices have brought us tidings of Him. 
Be it ours, like these shepherds of olden time, to 
verify the tidings and return to our vocations 
glorifying and praising God for the things we have 
heard and seen. 


37 





JESUS CHRIST THE FULFILMENT 


By M. E. Ausrey, M.A. 
Secretary of the Baptist Union 


“ Art thou he that should come ?””—Matt. xi. 3. 
“All the promises of God in him are yea.” 
—2 Cor. 1. 20. 


Jesus Christ the Fulfilment 


I 


Tue attack on the Christian faith is renewed again 
and again. No sooner has it been arrested and 
hurled back in one quarter than it advances 
from another. We have no reason to complain 
of this. We should rather be glad that every 
serious question directed against what is essential 
in our belief is a challenge and an occasion to 
demonstrate how impregnably it is built upon 
the rock of experience and fact. 

Last century it was physical science that 
brought its batteries to bear on us. The first 
fury of that assault is past, and it has almost spent 
its force. We no longer stagger before the 
onslaught. 

In these days the questions that harass and 
search us most deeply grow out of the comparative 
study of religion. Men brought up in the tra- 
ditional Christian beliefs are often perplexed. 
They have perhaps comeacross the translation of an 
ancient prayer to Osiris, in which he is given almost 
every descriptive title with which the early 


41 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


Christians honoured Our Lord. Osiris is the 
great redeemer in whose love, death and resur- 
rection to glory standeth man’s eternal hope. 
In his blood they are healed, justified and sancti- 
fied. So they read, and they find that the prayer 
was offered centuries before Christ came to earth. 
It is true that a sensitive Christian mind feels a 
difference in tone between such a prayer and the 
New Testament. It misses the deep penitential _ 
note of confession of sin and longing for forgive- 
ness. But there is still enough resemblance 
left to bewilder. Are the articles of the 
Christian faith only the creation of devout 
imagination? Men tell us that they can believe 
in “ God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven 
and earth,” but when they come to the Deity of 
Christ, the assertion that He was born of a virgin 
and that He rose from the dead, they find them- 
selves faced with beliefs of a sort by no means 
confined to the Christian religion. Other heroes, 
mythical or historical, have had the same related 
of them. The question emerges—why should a 
man believe such assertions when they are made 
of Christ, and not believe them of the others? 
If he believes them all, what becomes of the 
uniqueness of Our Lord? 

What are we to say to them? 

We may remind them, for their encouragement, 


42 


t 


| Jesus Christ the Fulfilment 
that the Christian walks by faith, not by creeds. A 
| creed is at best only an attempt to crystallize the 
experience of men at some stage of Christian life. 
_ But Christian faith is the reaching forth of the whole 
| | personality of a man in surrender to the truth and 
| call of Godin Christ. Faith is the mighty thing by 
which we are justified. Creeds are secondary. We 
do not pretend to answer all the questions of men 
| or to solve all their pecue a “ Great is the 
| mystery of godliness.” There will always remain 
| for usan uncomprehended element in the plans and 
purposes of God, for His thoughts are higher 
than our thoughts and His ways than our ways. 
| We do well to be on our guard against the man 
| who always has an easy answer for every diffi- 
culty. We see only as in a glass darkly. 
| But we may not take refuge in a helpless 
_obscurantism. The mystery is God’s challenge to 
us. So we can do more than cheer the lonely 
seeker on his way. We can perhaps suggest 
directions in which he may look for help. At 
least we may remind him that that man is more 
pleasing to God who has a little of the truth and 
lives resolutely in the light of it than his neigh- 
_ bour who professes to believe all and is indifferent 
to it. God will not desert him. “‘ He that willeth 
to do the will of God shall know of the teaching 
whether it be of God.” Let a man follow the 


43 












Advent and Christmas Sermons 


truth he sees and the Spirit of truth will guide 
him, and “knowledge grow from more to more.” 
We must also face the facts that the compara- 
tive study of religion has set before us. We have 
no right as Christian men to avoid them for the 
fear of disturbing the complacent belief of some. 
That is to minister to sheer mental and spiritual - 
indolence. We are losing far too many intelligent 
men and women from the churches through our 
hesitation to meet their questions. Christian 
congregations would be the better for knowing 
what sort of problems are troubling their neigh- 
bours, and why. Men do not deny our traditional 
beliefs because they do not want to believe. 
Very often they would be only too glad to accept 
them if they could do so honestly. ‘To those who 
find difficulty in declaring what the creeds assert, 
because they find parallels in other and pre- 
Christian religions, we surely have something 
to say. | 
Does it, after all, discredit our belief in Christ to 
find that some of its articles were anticipated in the 
minds of men before He came ? Is it not written” 
large everywhere in the New Testament that 
Jesus fulfilled the hope and anticipation of men ? 
When John the Baptist asked : “ Art thou He that 
should come?” was he not uttering the one 
question above all others that men in the early 


44 


Jesus Christ the Fulfilment 


days did ask of Christ, and which they learned 
to answer with a triumphant “ Yea”? When 
St. Paul asserts that He is the Yes to all the 
promises of God, does he not mean that for ages 
God had been speaking to men, directing their 
thoughts, preparing them for a revelation of 
Himself that was to come, and that at length it 
did come in Christ, in Whom all the promises 
were fulfilled ? In Him all their deepest longings 
which they had expressed in many ways were 
satisfied. There is that in Him which corresponds 
to the yearning soul of man. He fits the folds of 
man’s nature. 

If before Christ came men asserted a belief in 
a god-man, it meant that they sought a link 
between that spiritual power behind the world of 
things visible and their mortal life. They desired 
to know that the glory they dreamed as from afar 
could come to touch this earth and the hard- 
beset life of men. They dreamed of God manifest 
in the flesh. Something within them called for 
that. 
_ If their minds had seized on the idea of a virgin 
birth, at the very least it meant that they longed 
for an act of God by which a new element coming 
from above might enter our human story, and one 
which human ancestry with its taint might be 
inadequate to explain or produce. The fact that 


45 








Advent and Christmas Sermons 


they thought of it lifts a corner of the curtain 
from their souls. There, behind, we can feel their 
despair of human nature as they knew it without 
a Redeemer, their desire for a special creative 
act of God to effect their salvation. 

And when they went a step further and 
asserted—even if only in a myth—a resurrection 
from the dead: was not that a promise in their 
hearts? Men have always been arrested by the 
mystery of death, that dread event which sets a 
term to human action and breaks off the purposes 
of even the noblest life. Is it hard to believe that 
the Spirit of God was behind a demand that we 
feel must have existed before ever any belief 
in the resurrection could spring up—that a man 
with God should be demonstrably stronger than 
death 

All these myths and legends are surely whisper- 
ings, promises, forefancyings of what should be. 


II 


Then at length came Jesus Christ. Some 
Jews found that He fulfilled the desires of 
Israel. Then others who were not Jews found — 
that He met their need as well. Greeks and 
barbarians came to realize that He answered 
their longings. He was God’s response to the 
aspiring of human nature everywhere when it 


46 


Jesus Christ the Fulfilment 


turned to Him. ‘“‘ How many soever were the 
promises of God, in Him was the Yea.” 

He was the God-man. They never could 
think of Him as common clay, one with themselves 
in their weakness and defeat. They found that 
whenever they came to Him they could not 
escape a sense of God’s presence. 

They did not see how He could be explained 
by any merely human story. He was not of the 
earth, earthy. ‘There was something new and 
strange in Him. God in some special way had 
to do with the creation of Christ. The only 
explanation they could give was that He was 
born of a virgin and the Holy Ghost. 

They knew He lived, though crucified under 
Pontius Pilate. They were sure that His power was 
with them. The Cross was not the last word. They 
had the fact of the Christian Church in front of them, 
and it had been built upon faith in His resurrec- 
tion; and a story like that of the early society of 
Jesus cannot be explained by a delusion or a lie, 

When the Christians declare their God to be 
divine, born of a virgin, risen from the dead, they 
are saying that in Him the most fundamental of 
man’s longings and aspirings had reached a goal. 

The other religions that made similar asser- 
tions have gone down before Christ as stars 


pale in the light of day. The myths perished. 
47 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


, 
Men turned to Him instead. Why should His 
story remain to grip man more and more while 
the other stories pass, unless it be that a fact! 
can supersede a myth, and kill it? 

This is the all-important thing to grasp: that 
in Jesus Christ men found an answer in history 
to the desires to which in other ages they had 
given intellectual or religious shape. So He 
becomes the Master of minds and souls of every) 
age and condition. 

II 

St. Paul says that Christ is the wisdom of God! 
to both Jews and Greeks. These two peoples had! 
wrought out their questions on different lines. 
The former were driven by practical and religious: 
interests, the latter rather by speculative. St. Paul! 
says Christ has the answers for both. The: 
ultimate questions were the same, as indeed they) 
are for men in every age. 

What lies behind the mystery and wonder of the: 
world ? What is man’s relation to that supreme 
reality ? How should he rule his life in such a. 
universe? What is his destiny—Quo vadis ? 
Philosophers may label these problems cosmolo- 
gical, theological, ethical, final—what they will. 
The Christian finds his answers in the truth and 
love and life of Christ, and it is strange to see 
how Jesus Christ in an ever-increasing degree is 


48 


Jesus Christ the Fulfilment 


dominating the minds of men as they find in 
Him the answers to their questions, and the 
satisfaction of their needs. 

He dominates their thoughts. The one thing 
men have never been able to do with Jesus 
Christ is to get rid of Him. He will not be ignored 
nor brushed aside. The human mind is com- 
pelled to consider Him. “ That strange man from 
His Cross,” wrote Father Tyrrell, “‘ will not let 
it go.” In the eighteenth century rationalism 
announced that Christianity was doomed, that 
within a century the religion of Christ would have 
ceased to hold men. In the nineteenth century a 
materialistic science believed it had undermined the 
foundations of all religion, and that Jesus Christ was 
discredited. Rationalism and materialism have had 
their day. Jesus Christ goes on. He is still there, 
challenging men, compelling their thought and 
their questions. More is written of Him in these 
days than was ever written before. The best 
f thought of menisalwaysapproaching nearer to His. 
And if He dominates the intellectual life of men, 
is Henot alsochanging their emotional life as well ? 
Hatred of the enemy was once a virtue. In these 
days we would forget our orgies of bitterness, and 
hymns of hate must be explained away or forgotten. 

In ancient times compassion and pity were signs 
of weakness that a wise, strong man might never 


49 2 








Advent and Christmas Sermons 


feel nor indulge. Whence comes our modern care 
for the unfit, the crippled ? our concern for the aged 
and the children? Does man owe nothing here 
to nineteen centuries of the impact of Christ ? 
Or, consider the moral life of man. The moral 
leadership of the world is not with Osiris, 
Krishna, Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed—it is” 
with Christ. A notable Hindu confessed me 





\ 
4 


time ago that the other religions of India would 
pass away, while Jesus Christ would remain. 
Even now in Hinduism and Buddhism and 
Mohammedanism changes are taking place, and | 
the secret is to be found not so much in reform ~ 
from within asin the pressure of Christian standards 
from without. Soon or late our brethren born in | 
other faiths will find that all that is good in them ! 
finds its fulfilment in Christ—that He is the 
Yea to the promises of God te them. He, as none 4 
other, satisfies the mind and the heart of man. 
He stands alone and supreme, He towers — 
above others as a mountain raises itself to the sky © . 
above the foothills which we take by the way. . 
He is the last refuge of souls. Others have failed - 
us. He never fails. That is the Christian experience 
behind thecreeds. Every hope of forgiveness, every — 
aspiration after goodness, every dream of victory 
and peace—all are fulfilled in Him. He is God’s 


answer to our need: the Yea to all His promises. — 











laa 
5 - 


CHRIS SMeCaALl TOWAWAKE 


BY Wee Be INGE OL V2G),s0L), 1D, 
Dean of St. Paul’s. 


“* Yesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, 
that they which see not might see; and that they which 
see might be made blind.” —John ix. 39. 





Christ’s Call to Awake 


_ For the first generation of Christians the drama 
of redemption was a tragedy in two acts, covering 
avery few years. The Christ had come once in 
the form of a servant ; His contemporaries would 
shortly see Him return in the form of a King. 
But this cramped and childlike interpretation of 
the greatest revelation ever made to mankind was 
only the outer form of a deep and saving faith, 
grounded not on the dreams of Jewish politicians, 
but on the new insight into eternal values which 
the Disciples had gained from their intercourse 
with Christ. The husk fell off easily and almost 
painlessly. The Kingdom of God became the 
Church, militant on earth, expectant in Paradise, 
triumphant in Heaven. The second coming 
faded into the dim and distant future. The 
Messianic attributes of Christ were in part thrown 
back upon His earthly ministry. By degrees these 
fluid conceptions crystallized into the popular 
orthodoxy which is still preached in our churches. 

But in the Fourth Gospel we have a resolute 
attempt to penetrate the deeper meaning of 


53 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


these beliefs, and to bring out their spiritual 
and universal significance. St. John’s treate 
ment of the judgment is worthy of our most 
careful attention, and may well occupy our 
thoughts in the season of Advent. The popular 
teaching was and is: Christ came once to save 
the world ; He will come again to judge the 
world. St. John would have us understand that 
the two offices, of Saviour and Judge, cannot be 
separated. Christ is always Saviour ; and He is 
always Judge. By the mere fact of coming into 
the world, He winnows the wheat of humanity 
from the chaff. Wherever Christ is, there is 
salvation and condemnation. ‘The Gospel brings 
life and light to some, darkness and destruction 
to others. Just as the man, blind from his birth, — 
was restored to sight, while the Pharisees, proud 
of their skill in the law, were smitten with judicial 
blindness: so it must always be. 

The call of Christ leaves no one where it found 
him. It forces upon us a choice which, but for that 
call, might not havecome to usinso decisive aform. 
Every Advent we hear the same trumpet-call. 
“ Now it is high time to awake out of sleep, for 
now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” 
Our salvation—so we hope ; but our judgment 
certainly, the final judgment to be passed upon 
our lives, is nearer, twelve months nearer, than 


54 


| 





Christ’s Call to Awake 


when we last heard those words in the Epistle for 
Advent Sunday. Believe me, Bishop Butler’s 
famous words are psychologically true; that passive 
impressions, impulses which are not acted upon, 
grow weaker at each repetition. To take a 


_ homely illustration, those who set an alarum to 


wake them at a certain hour will hear it every day 
if they get up when it sounds ; but if they go to 


sleep again, they will soon slumber through it. 


It has been said of a great man, that he passed 
through the dream of life as one awake. Genius 
is life at a higher power, at a greater intensity. 
The great man sees more clearly, feels more deeply, 
wills more strenuously, than ordinary men. He 
is more thoroughly awake, more alive, than other 
people. 

Weare such creatures of habit, we live so much 
in ruts, that when a great thing happens we do 
not realize it. Even if it closely touches ourselves, 

_we are slow to understand all that it means to us. 
An unexpected sorrow is, perhaps, mercifully 
blunted for our sense. We know that it is true ; 
but even while we are thinking of it, our thoughts 
run back to the old channels. We listen for the 
footstep or the voice which we shall never hear 
again. We wait still for the touch of the vanished 
hand ; we turn over our little pile of letters, and 
look for the well-known handwriting. A sudden 


a 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


joy 1s almost equally stunning. Weask ourselves _ 


wonderingly why we do not feel the exultation 


which we should have expected. The news is_ 


still external to us : “ like a tale of little meaning, 


though the words are strong.” ‘The new experi- 
ence soaks in by degrees ; but we never realize 


it all at once in its total meaning. 
In matters that do not touch our surface-life, 


we have to allow not merely for defective sensi- — 


bility, but for the blindness caused by selfishness. 
There are many people who go through life with 
no eyes except for what may help or hinder them 
in carrying out their schemes for “ getting on.” 
These are the so-called “ practical men,” who, as 
they trot along the broad road in their self- 
chosen blinkers, miss all the finer meanings and 
nobler uses of life more completely than the 
average commonplace and unambitious person 
whom they despise. Their doom was uttered 
long ago. ‘‘ He gave them their desire, and sent 
leanness withal into their soul.” They have 
chosen to live without love, and in missing that 
they have missed all. 

The great crises of history, and the great 
revolutions or revelations in human knowledge, 
have been most strangely impotent to move the 
mass of mankind out of their familiar ruts. For 
instance, the city of Rome, owing mainly to 


56 


| 
Christ’s Call to Awake 


_ obvious geographical advantages, was for many 
centuries mistress of the Mediterranean basin, 
| which then almost comprised the civilized world ; 
_ and so strong is the force of habit that to this day 

many millions of Christians are convinced that in 

the counsels of God there must always be a 
_ universal Church with its seat of government on 
the banks of the Tiber. Again, modern 
_ astronomy has long ago shattered the old reli- 
gious geography of the universe ; but old habits 
of thought are too strong for new knowledge. 
The world of many Christians is still a building 
in three storeys. More recently, the discovery 
of evolution has left nothing in politics, theology, 
or morals, quite where it was before. The fact 
of our real kinship with all that lives and moves in 
the world does not detract one atom from the 
glory and dignity of the humanity which God 
created after His Own image, and which His Son 
deigned to take upon Him for our sakes ; but it 
does add a new lustre, a new sacredness, to the rest 
of creation and to the laws which it obeys. It 
does give a new force to that wonderful chapter 
of Romans in which St. Paul declares his hope that 
the creation will be delivered from the bondage 
of corruption ; it does help us to understand the 
Pauline and Johannine doctrine that in the Son 


of God, the Word, all things subsist. It certainly 
“yl! 





Advent and Christmas Sermons 


involves a new responsibility in our dealings 
with the lower animals, our poor relations. But 
these truths will take centuries to soak into the 
popular mind. 

The Gospel of Christ was a greater revolution 
than any of these discoveries. ‘Think what it 
must have been to the first Disciples of Jesus to 
find that the Kingdom to which they were invited 
was not of this world. ‘Think of the terrible 
wrench in giving up those patriotic dreams which — 
had comforted the Jews through centuries of 
exile, persecution, and servitude. Think of the 
shock at being bidden to welcome to the society 
of the redeemed the uncircumcised Philistine, the 
heretical Samaritan, the barbarian and the 
Scythian. And what rare greatness there was in 
St. Paul, that he realized nearly all that it meant | 
The spiritual Israel instead of the nation ; the 
indwelling Spirit of Christ instead of the priests 
and temple ; the entirely new standard of values 
—the loving, unselfish heart, which, in having 
nothing, possesses all things, instead of the worldly 
prosperity which in the old Testament is the sign 
of God’s favour—the law of living sacrifice, of 
gain through pain, of life through death—the 
sublime triads of faith, hope, love, and love, joy, 
peace—all these things, in which the originality 
and far-reaching import of the Gospel mainly 


58 


| 
| 





Christ’s Call to Awake 


consists, were seized and realized by St. Paul as 


they have been by few since. He saw at once 


what it must mean for him personally. The 


whole course of his life was changed. Those 
things which before were gain to him he now 
counted but refuse, that he might “ win Christ.” 
The Incarnation had altered everything, and it 
surprised him that others did not see that it 
had altered everything. There must be a veil on 
their hearts ; they must be asleep and dreaming. 
It is strange to him that people can go on living 
as if the light of the Glory of God had not shone 
upon them in the face of Jesus Christ. ‘“‘ Awake, 
thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and 
Christ shall shine upon thee.” 

What would St. Paul say to us to-day, if he 
were preaching in this greatest of the churches 
dedicated in his name? Is the world a different 
place to you and me because Christ has lived in 
it? Is our hope in Christ the decisive factor in 
the principles that we live by, in the things that 
we desire for ourselves and our children? We 
think we believe, I know ; but is our faith awake, 
or is it lying bedridden in some dormitory of our 
soul? Is it part of us at all, or furniture stacked 
in a lumber-room P 

Let it be our special business this Advent to 
make our religion alive and wideawake. To 


59 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


begin with, let us make sure what we really | 
believe. Some teachers would have us regard the 
Creed as a “‘ deposit,” something to be kept safe 
and handed back intact. ‘“‘ Lord, here is Thy 
pound, which I have kept wrapped up in a 
napkin. Lo, here Thou hast what is Thine.” 
But surely, my brethren, what matters is how 
deeply we believe, not how much we accept. It 
is better to believe in one Article than to assent to 
Thirty-nine. The rudimentary creeds in the 
New Testament are theologically very imperfect, 
but those who held them were willing to die for 
them. 

Secondly, we need to quicken our fee/ing of the 
truth of our religion. We must practise “ recol- 
lection,”’ with short prayers and acts of uplifting 
the mind to God, many times during the day. If 
we give about sixteen hours a day to this world, 
and about five sleepy minutes to the other, it is 
no wonder if God and Heaven seem rather 
shadowy things to us. 

And, of course, we must act as persons who are 
awake. Our consciousness of the great revela- 
tion of the Gospel must show itself in the conse- 
cration of our whole life, “whether we eat or 
drink or whatsoever we do.”’ It must, above all _ 
things, deepen our love to God and our neigh- 
bour. “If ye know these things,” said our Lord, 

60 


ee ~~ = 





Christ’s Call to Awake 


“happy are yeif yedothem.” “ He that saith, 
I know God, and keepeth not His commandments, 
is a liar!” says St. John, bluntly. 

So, by God’s grace, the call to awake out of 
sleep may not be lost upon us. So our eyes may 
be opened to see God and do His will. And so 
a life of ever-increasing alertness and watchful- 
ness may be the prelude of that clearer vision 
when, after the sleep of death, we shall wake up 
after God’s likeness and shall be satisfied with it, 


, 


rs 
0 ia 
i 


oh ai 


pat +4 an 
Pes VM 





THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM 


By AU MCACEY. Visti Eueke 
Canon of Worcester. 





“< Tf any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, 
or there; believe it not.’ —Miatt. xxiv, 23. 





The Coming of the Kingdom 


A warninc. Sufficiently impressive, you might 
think, but strangely disregarded. At all times 
in the history of Christianity there have been 
men who would point to the immediate coming 
of Christ, with particularity of time and place ; at 
all times they have had deluded followers, and 
the shame of repeated disappointment seems to 
be no hindrance. Some of us can remember 
startling examples of this kind of prediction. 
When I was a boy there was a whole group of 
them, alike in the main, but differing in particulars. 
All who put them forth were equally confident, 
and each one contradicted others. They spec- 
ulated on wars and rumours of wars, on earth- 
quakes and famines, forgetting that most ages are 
ery much alike in that respect, and treating their 
own age as exceptional ; they made ingenious 
avithmetical calculations based on texts of 
Scripture imperfectly understood. Others relied 
on the disappearance of faith from the earth, 
which meant chiefly a disregard of their own 
predictions. Some of them abounded in prom- 
ises, declaring that the hundred and forty and 
65 E 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


four thousand of the redeemed would be made > 


up exclusively from their own adherents. The 
wilder follies or wickednesses of this kind hardly 
call for explanation ; but there were—and there 
still are—men of a very different stamp, men of un- 
questionable piety, men of considerable learning, 





devoting themselves to studies of the same kind ; | 


they earnestly desire the coming of the Lord, and 
they try to ascertain its approach in the very way 


which the Lord himself discouraged: “It is not 


for you to know the times or seasons.” The un- 
availing search goes on continuously. How 
shall we account for it P 

There was in the days of the Gospel a vague 
expectation, hope or fear, of a great catastrophe 
which should usher in the Kingdom of God. 
This was general ; but some reduced the vague- 
ness to precise detail, and wrote exact predice 
tions of varied character. ‘Their writings were 
what we now call eschatological, teaching about 
the End of the World. The Lord Jesus, in 
declaring that the Kingdom of God was at 
hand—which is the first meaning of the Gospel, 


the Good News—did not brush aside these ex- | 


pectations, nor even these predictions. That was 

not his way. He made use of them as imagery 

of the truth which he had to impart. There 

was no difficulty about this for one who habitually 
bo 


The Coming of the Kingdom 


taught by parables. I will come back pre- 
-sently to the truth which was so taught, but 
I must first remind you that almost all the 
disciples of our Lord had been in the habit of 
taking that imagery as reality, an exact descrip- 
tion of things that were actually going to happen. 
Such a habit of mind is not easily cast off, and 
even the most intimate disciples clung to it with 
amazing tenacity. The result was that two 
currents of thought continued to run side by 
side ; on the one side the plain teaching of the 
Lord about things actually true, on the other 
side the imagery in which the truth had been 
wrapped. To take familiar examples, you will 
find the imagery treated as prediction of actual 
fact in the first Epistle to the Thessalonians : 
“The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven 
with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel 
and with the triumph of God: and the dead in 
Christ shall rise first : then we which are alive 
and remain shall be caught up together with 
them in the air: and so shall we ever be with 
the Lord.” The writer of that description was 
perhaps Silvanus, St. Paul’s companion, but it 
Was written with St. Paul’s approval ; and five 
or six years afterwards something of the same 
sort was written, with greater sobriety, in the First 
Epistle to the Corinthians, which was certainly 
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Advent and Christmas Sermons 


St. Paul’s own. But alongside of this you 
also find something of a different kind ; not 
prediction of an end to come, but recognition 
of an end that has arrived. ‘The stories of the 
Old Testament were written, says St. Paul, “ for 
our admonition, upon whom the ends of the 
world are come.” ‘That became the conviction — 
of the Apostolic Church. “ Little children, it is 
the last time,” wrote St. John. Nay, what he 
wrote is more emphatic: “‘ It is the latest hour.” — 
This way of looking at the end finds its com- 
pletion in the Book of the Revelation of John, 
where all the old imagery is used with extreme 
vividness, no longer as prediction, but as imagery 
of a present reality, of things actually taking place. 
It is always, “‘I saw,” and known events of 
history can be identified in the visions alongside 
of the invisible events of the Spirit. This is not to 
say that there is no prediction at all in that great 
prophetic book. There is prevision, there is pre- 
diction, and this also is wrapped up in imagery, 
not easily to be disentangled ; but the imagery of 
the book deals more with things past and present, 
such as the great fire at Rome and the persecution 
of Christians which ensued upon it, than, with 
things to come. Think of the description of the 
first Resurrection, Christ’s faithful witnesses 
raised from death here and now to reign with 
68 


The Coming of the Kingdom 


the Lord in the City which is even now coming 
down from God out of Heaven. The sense of the 
book is that there is much yet to happen, but that 
even now it is the time of the end ; the judgment 
is set and the books are opened. 

How did the Church come to this consciousness 
of the end as actually present? You must go 
back to the personal teaching of the Lord Jesus. 
Using the eschatological imagery of the time, he 
led men away from the habit of taking it for 
reality. They were not anxiously to scan the 
future, “for, behold, the Kingdom of God is 
within you.”” Perhaps the words mean rather “in 
your midst,”’ but the sense remains the same, for 
this kingdom is invisible to eyes that look on 
outward things. He proclaimed the immediate 
coming of the Kingdom; men then living should 
see itscoming. Thereis noescapefromit. “ This 
generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled.” 
Do not listen to quibbles about the meaning of 
so plain a sentence. If you wish for something 
even more explicit, you can find it: “‘ There be 
some of them that stand here, which shall not 
taste of death till they have seen the Kingdom of 
God come with power.” 

But then two questions insist on being heard. 
The first : When that generation was long since 
passed away, how could men who believed the 


69 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


words of the Lord Jesus look for the coming of 
the Kingdom in the future? The second: How 
and when did the Kingdom come? It is with the 
second that I am most concerned. 

A careful reading of the Gospel will give you 
the answer. At first you hear Jesus proclaiming in 
the most general terms thatthe Kingdom 1s at hand. 
Then there is a limit of time fixed; the Kingdom 
was to come in the life-time of men then living. 
But still, the day and the hour no man knows, 
“No, not the angels which are in Heaven, neither 
the Son, but the Father.” But at last the Son 
knows the day and the hour, and declares it. 
You have the declaration of Jesus before Caiaphas. 
““Now and from this time onward ye shall see 
the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of 
power and coming in the clouds of Heaven.” I 
give you the full force of the words, which is 
weakened in our English version. Here is some- 
thing future, but also a present reality. The 
evangelists who recorded the prediction of the 
Kingdom within that generation recorded also 
this more tremendous affirmation. You cannot 
imagine them recording either unless they were 
convinced that the prediction was fulfilled and 
the affirmation proved true. ‘‘ Now, and from 
this time onward.”’ He who made the affirmation 
was soon to hang on the Cross, and there the robber 


70 


The Coming of the Kingdom 


pleaded for remembrance when the Kingdom 
_ should come. But the answer brushed aside the 
hope of an uncertain future : ‘‘ To-day shalt thou 
be with me in paradise.” The Lord spoke as 
reigning king, lifted up on the Cross against the 
clouds of heaven—and Caiaphas saw. Saw 
what? Who shall say? There is a prophecy 
quoted as apt: “‘ They shall look on Him whom 
they pierced.” Did he see beyond? But even 
the faithful who saw were slow to understand, 
and even after the Resurrection they still teased 
the Master with questions about the times and 
seasons of the Kingdom. The old answer was 
given once more: the Father has put these things 
in his own power; but then there was a 
promise: “ Ye shall receive power ”—it is not 
the same word in the Greek, but the connection 
seems obvious—“ after that the Holy Ghost is 
come upon you.” ‘The Holy Ghost came, and 
Peter at once declared the meaning of it, as 
spoken by Joel the prophet : ‘It shall come to 
pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my 
Spirit upon all flesh.” Inthe last days! These men 
were they upon whom the ends of the world were: 
come. In the light of the Resurrection they saw and 
understood the Cross, the coming of Christ into 
His Kingdom ; and they proclaimed it. ‘‘ There- 
fore let all the house of Israel know assuredly 


a | 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye 
have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” 

And yet we pray, “ Thy Kingdom come 
and the language of futurity has never ceased. 
Eyes still fail with looking upward. At the end 
of the apostolic age men were querulously asking 
“Where is the promise of His coming?” It 
was necessary to warn them that, although they 
were indeed living in the last day, yet the Day of 
the Lord may well outlast a thousand years of 
man’s reckoning. ‘There is still a future: the 
completion of the Day. But the Day is here, and 
we are living in it. Our eyes do see the establish- 
ment of the Kingdom, though not yet its final 
triumph. Our eyes do see the throne set, and 
judgment given. For it is the Day of Judgment 
in which we live. It is when Judgment becomes 
terrible that we are most aware of its presence ; 
but present it is always, whether in the stirring 
of a single conscience or in the crash of an 
empire. The Kingdom present and Judgment 
present are not to be denied. They force them- 
selves upon the Christian understanding, even 
when the tendency to futurity and expectancy is 
at the strongest. Our Advent hymns are almost 
inevitably controlled by that tendency, but the 
truth breaks through : 

“Great God, what do I see and hear |” 


72 


Re? 


The Coming of the Kingdom 


It is the cry of a soul conscious of the Kingdom 
and of Judgment. And there is an answer no 
less conceived in terms of the present : 
“Lo, he comes in clouds descending.” 

The use of imagery is not obsolete. The meaning 
of the imagery is not completely realized, and 
until that be done, alike in thought and in action, 
the language of imagery will be a wholesome 
stimulant. But we must remember that it is 
imagery of the present as well as of the still 
veiled future. We must hold fast, with whatever 
difficulty, the consciousness of the Last Day, of 
the Kingdom come, in which the Church of the 
Apostles rejoiced and endured. 

It is a general consciousness, common to the 
whole Church, however dimly illuminated, and we 
must hold it fast. We are not to look for Christ 
here or there, in local or temporal manifestation : 
“ For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the 
one part under Heaven, shineth unto the other 
part under Heaven, so shall also the Son of Man 
be in his day.” The Kingdom is in our midst, 
established in the universal Church of Christ ; it 
is within us, wheresoever Christ reigns in the 
hearts of the simple. ‘‘ I saw, and behold a white 
horse ; and he that sat on him had a bow ; and 
a crown was given unto him : and he went forth 
conquering and to conquer.” 


73 


‘ae ripe 


Ad a aes 





HE CAME TO) SAVE 


By Laucutan MacLean Watt, D.D. 
Glasgow Cathedral. 





“ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all accep 
ation, that Christ Fesus came into the world to sav 
sinners.”—1 Timothy 1. 15. 


He Came to Save 


I 
_Wuen human struggle emerges from the mist 
into the light of history, we find Greek, Hebrew, 

Egyptian, all groping in a reeling world for some 
_ sure standing ground, holding out blind hands 
for the grip of some certain hope, yearning for 
| the sorrow of their empty hearts to be transformed 
by the secret of ever-eluding gladness. It is as 
marvellous as it is true, how many gropers after 
| God have left their cry recorded, insome form or 
other, in old literatures. Yet, through all the 
darkness there is, alongside of this utterance of 
need, the acknowledgment of the wondrous light 
of a hope, in the advent of One in Whom might 
be found what their own natures did not give 
them—freedom from degrading passions, libera- 
tion from low desires, the victory over meanness 
and uncleanness, satisfaction of the hunger for 
the things that do not die. And it was naturally 
so, for, of course, the moment a man looks into 
his own heart, he knows that he is enslaved—he 
knows that he might do better than spend his life 


77 








Advent and Christmas Sermons 


stumbling through blind alleys ; he knows his. 
aspirations are infinite, and that the wings of his | 
soul were meant to be stretched out in heaven- 
ward soarings, not to be cramped in hindering 
environments. He knows that he was meant to | 
stand up before God in a clean, pure manhood, | 
not dragged at the heels of passion, not swirled — 
through the gasping fever of sin—that the divine 
within him was to be kept clean, and not to be 
obscured, but to be brought into harmony with 
the life invisible, which, though at present 
broken from his hand-grip, is yet, somehow, © 
waiting on the other side till Love shall fling a 
line across to lead him into peace. The darkest 
phases of the spiritual history of the world were 
thus shot through with mystic gleams whereby 
the inner divine found deep revealings. In these 
bright moments man saw written on the ruins of © 
his nature that which told him that something of — 
God was his, as some proud name which shone — 
upon the waters long ago in beauty and in strength 
is seen upon wreckage in the sludge of the ebb 
of a tidal river. This glimmering hint of some- 
thing better that had been, and something better — 
that might be, kept hope alive within the soul, — 
and guided it in its yearning. And there emerged — 
the true meaning of sin, namely, that the sinner 
was one who had ‘“ missed the mark,” walked 


78 














He Came to Save 


| wide of the true way, lost the line of the path of 
life itself. And unto some there rose the full glory 
-of the vision of God—a God holy above the 
awfulness of human sin; with the knowledge 
that only by low ways of suffering and of pain 
close-set with thorns, and shut about with crosses, 
could the human spirit climb those shining heights 
white with the loving presence of its God. 

Now God the Holy One can never be reconciled 
to man the sinner except through pity. Yet God’s 
pity cannot alone suffice. It must be rooted in 
justice, and not in soft-hearted weakness, like that 
of an indulgent father whose indulgence spoils 
“his children. The balance of the moral universe 
must be restored. Man cannot be brought back 
into the life in God without pain, for his pride of 
"heart must be broken by himself or by heaven. 

_ Man is, through sin, the antagonist of God. 
Sin is wilful pride and must be humbled. The 
entanglements of broken commandments on the 
_way to heaven pierce the feet like flints. Sin is 
the poisoning of the wells of life, which should 
ever flow Godwards ; and the mystery of Christ 
is the mystery of the healing and sweetening of the 
waters by the Cross of Love. 
__ Sin is the blind Samson pulling down the temple 
of the soul ; Christ is the manifestation of restor- 
ing Love among the ruins. If the Builder had 


79 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


pain, shall not the Rebuilder have wounds? 
Hence, in the Christ Who saves must be found, | 
alike, sufferings and victories divine and human—_ 
the agony and the victory of God, the anguish 
and the victory of man, | 

Especially does the knowledge that God would. 
one day begin His work of restoration, come to. 
us through the pages of the Psalmists and the. 
Prophets, who read in individual and national | 
experience, the needs of human nature, and the 
secret of their healing. They felt sure that God) 
would save Zion, that He would rend the heavens » 
and come down—that behind the changing scenes 
of history His mercy waited for its hour. And! 
at last the fulness of God’s time came, and with it! 
the answer to human problems. 

There was, then, the fact of a cleavage between | 
God and man, which human feet could never * 
cross, and human hands could never bring to-- 
gether—a vast abyss, from traversing which the ’ 
soul shrank in fear of the Unknown ; and God’ 
seemed thrust afar from the souls that He had made, | 
and who, without Him, were as good as dead. 
What was needed to save the world from suicide: 
was the grasping of the human by the divine, 
a stretching forth of the humanness of the fatherly 
in God, towards the divinest in man—a heavenly 
hand among the broken strings, a re-attunement 

80 










He Came to Save 


| 
| 

| 

‘of the nature all at discord, a setting of the chords 
| again to the great music of celestial spheres which, 
‘like a baptism, had fallen around the spirit long 
ago in the beginning. 

Now, had Jesus of Nazareth not appeared 
as a reviving influence, a quickening personality, 
a life-giving life, there was little but moral 
and spiritual disaster before the world. For 
there was no answer to the questionings, no 
‘solution of the gropings, no consolation for the 
sorrowings of humanity. Natural religion gave 
no solace to the soul. The still small voice, 
/when it was listened to at all, within the heart, 
only rebuked it to a sense of the entirely incom- 
plete. ‘The gods had forsaken their altars, the 
_ashes of the temple fires were cold, the oracles 
were dumb ; yet, for the first time, a possibility 
of universal empire had come to men, through the 
roads which the Roman had opened across the 
world, and through the flexible language of the 
| Greek, which had made men’s hearts responsive 
to the interpretation of spiritual ideals in glowing 
' words. 





It 


_ How then did Christ come? He came, not 
as a Cesar or a Herod, not born in a royal palace, 
from which He would have had to break out 


a FE 





Advent and Christmas Sermons 


for His world-work, as did His great forerunner, | 


Moses, carrying with him, on his own part—as 
an insuperable barrier between him and the 


naked, the poor, the down-trodden and the sad, 


the aimless, and those whose hope had died— 
that lack of intimate knowledge of the inner and 
outer life of the friendless and forlorn, and 


awakening, on their part, that prejudice against | 
aristocratic interference, which undoubtedly hame | 
pered the work of the great leader of early Israel. ' 
God’s best growth in this world springs from ' 
within and beneath, and he who is to save the | 
poor, in the day when only the rich and powerful | 


| 


‘ 
: 


‘ 
, 


| 


f 


! 
| 


are accounted anything, must begin among the 
poorest. The poor man Christ, no spare-time | 
philanthropist, must He be. Hence His kin- 


ship with Sorrows. For He Who would heal the 


broken hearts must have deep scars in His own ; 


and He Who would wipe the tears from weeping 
eyes must have known what it was to have God’s 


healing of His own pain. The Saviour of all 


ranks has got to break into palaces, from the side 


where the windows do not look upon the sins and 
sorrows of the poor. 

And, yet again, the Saviour of the sorrows of 
men, the Uplifter of the hopes of broken humane 


ity, was most suitably born into that race, which, 


more than any race in all the world, has been the 
82 











He Came to Save 


vehicle of human desolation, of mortal sickness 
and want and pain, driven through all the nations 
of the world, landless and without a home. For 
God was going to save men, not through poetry 
or art, which was the channel of the Greek—not 
through law and military conquest, which was the 
channel of the Roman—not through mysticism 
of animalism, which was the channel of the 
| Egyptian, and certainly never through the volup- 
tuousness of lust, which, like a_blood-stain, 
tarnished the records of them all—but by the 
knowledge of Himself, revealed in a broken and 
a contrite heart—through the manifestation of 
His love in a Redeemer, Who was not only the 
Master of ethical truths, and Teacher of forbear- 
ance and brotherliness in a world of unkindly 
impatience, but also, and above all, the Friend 
of souls, the Comrade of struggling humanity, 
the Guide of suffering hearts, the Reconciler 
with God, the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with 
grief ; with Whom, and in the heart of Whose 
_ sufferings was the anodyne of all the ages’ pain, 
the solution of the universal secret. 
| And further—one must enter into the con- 
_ fused issues of human hopes and failures, human 
sin and pain, who could stand before God for 
the race with example, propitiation, reconcile- 
ment, and atonement. Hence the broken, poor 


83 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


man Christ, naked as the most naked whom He 
came to clothe in love, scarred as the most stricken 
of those whom sin had wounded, divine in love 
and pity as the most Divine, and human as myself, 
must come, or God’s grip on the souls that He 


has made is lost, and His purposes are futile 


entirely. 
Now, of the holy transaction between Christ 


and God hid within the veil, I know nothing, 
but this, verily, I know—and, though I found it — 


for myself to be true, others have learned it 
before me, for there were broken hearts, many, 


since Paul’s was broken in the dust of the ways _ 


of human pride—the hand that has healing in it — 


must have scars, for the very soul it heals wounds 


“2 
¥ 


it. And this, also, I know, that no man can ~ 
carry my sorrows better than I can carry them 
myself ; no man can take from me the sins by — 
which I have known music and won tear-bringing — 
laughter ; and no man can carry my broken heart, ~ 
or my ruined health, or my spirit shattered through ~ 


my sin. No man is strong enough, pure enough, 
brave enough, rash enough for that. Yea, even 
though a man stand forth in crowded court and 
take my blame upon his head, and go to prison 
and to scorn under the censure of my crime, still 
on my soul a punishment remains ; and day, 


with its shining sun, pierces me with sorrow, and 


84 








He Came to Save 


the woodland, all a-babble with the sigh of leaves 
and ripple of the streams, makes me ashamed of 
my guilt before God ; and night becomes filled 
with a thousand eyes of sad and scornful rebuke 
aboveme. Yet, knowing this, if One came to me 
saying that He came to save me from these things, 
to carry the ache incessant from my heart, to 
cleanse the stain that lies upon my soul known only 
to myself and God, to give me joy for tears, and 
peace for pain’s unrest, I must follow Him ; 
and I should know Him to be what He claimed 
to be—man, yet greater than man—by the face 
marred more than the faces of the sons of men, 
by the hand wounded with the nails of others, 
by the peace that would fall into my heart through 
Him. For the divine atonement of Christ 
Jesus leaves no sting behind. Perfect peace is 
given by Him when He heals our wounds. 


III 
** He Came To Save” 


That statement heads many a page in the 
Philosophy of History. No view of the history 
of the world can be the true view which ignores 
His peerless influence. Through a door of 
mystery beyond our understanding—to speak of 
which is, to us, well-nigh blasphemy, a thing to 


os 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


be hid in the holy of holies veiled—the Divine 
became human, and looked upon the sorrows of 
the world and the sin and shame of men through 
the eyes of the saddest race the world has known. 
And He saw that nakedness and poverty are 
better than riches and possessions won at the 
cost of unrest and weariness of the soul—that a 
soul’s pilgrimage falls short of heaven, because it 
most often walks its way overburdened with 
, earthly things—that the far-off God could only be 
brought near by the channel of a Father’s pity ; 
and that the only avenue to restoration of the lost 
graces of the spiritual life was by the crucifixion 
of self upon the Cross of the sorrows and the sins 
of others. And so He gave Himself, living and 
dying, a sacrifice for men ; showing that out of 
the grave of the old rises the new life which is 
the true life, and that only through a death and 
resurrection in Him does a man find his best self, 
and become a fellow-labourer with God. 

Now the evidence for the historical reality of 
Christ’s advent was the personal experience of 
those who beheld Him, who heard Him speak, 
and saw Him do His works of love and pity, 
healing and help. And the greatest Christian 
evidence is still just the testimony of the experi- 
ence of those who have been brought into contact 
with Christ the Comforter in their sorrow, the 

86 








He Came to Save 


Comrade in their loneliness, the Uplifter in their 
sin. No argued creed, no philosophical treatise, 
has half the strength of that. 

It is difficult to remove prejudice by books of 
argument. To write volumes on the saving 
grace of Jesus will not move the stumbling-stone 
of stubborn prejudice from the pathway of the 
soul. But one heart made clean, one life that 
was unlovely made pure and sweet—a man, or 
above all, a woman, whom acts of magistrates, 
the severities of police courts, the censure of 
society, the shame of absolute ostracism, the 
silent streets filled with unrecognizing faces, 
could not redeem—such an one saved from the 
horror of criminal impurities, cruelties, passion- 
ate revelries of sin and crime, by the Spirit of 
God, with the balm of the love of Christ, is the 
greatest proof of all that He comes to save. 

The poet spake truth, who, in his great vision, 
met suddenly in hell one whom he knew in 
Florence, and of whose death he had not heard 
when he left that city for his doleful pilgrimage. 
And he said, ‘‘ What? art thou too dead?” 
“ Nay,” sorrowfully replied the melancholy shade, 
“Tam not dead ; but, though my body lives in 
Florence, my soul for these long years has been in 
hell.” Yet who, that knows anything of human 
life and human strife and sin, and the war of man’s 


87 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


soul against God, has not beheld even such a soul 
led back as from hell itself, by the gentle pity of 
Christ, where a mother’s prayers, and a wife’s 
pleading, a sister’s tears, and a child’s distress, 
have been unavailing as water spilt on sand ? 
The mystery of the love of Jesus Christ, Whom, 
having not seen, we yet feel moving in still 
moments through our lives, has broken the bonds 
of sin, and opened wide again the gate of life. 
Now, what Christ does in lives like these, 
He did for the nations and the ages of the world’s 
history. He took the civilizations of Greece 
and Rome and bound the screaming eagles to 
the Cross, making the empires, which had con- — 
quered the world in their strength and blood, 
empires of love and truth. He brought the 
dying and the poor from the palace gates into the 
very hearts of kings and princes ; and He made 
poverty, weakness, namelessness, and sorrow, — 
holy things, through His pity and His love. And 
what He did, He does still. For He did not 
come to save only those of His own day, of His — 
own race, of His own name. He came to save 
you and me, as well as Paul and Silas, Martha and 
Mary, Nicodemus and Matthew. It is this per- 
sonal dealing with the individual soul that makes 
the matter specially dear to us as it was to Paul. 
He came to make our hearts clean places where 
88 


He Came to Save 


sweet love could dwell ; to make our hands white 
with helpfulness, though they may be scarred 
in the helping of others. He came to save us 
from the dying worship of a dying world’s 
glittering store, from the fear and the praise of 
men, from the thought of reward or censure as the 
meed of our life—from sin, however secret-—from 
sorrow, however bitter—from shame, like cancer 
in our hearts. 

Oh, who can bar the door against the knocking 
of the Prince of Peace? What window can be 
closed against the Love that stands amid the 
thorns for you and me? And who forget the 
love of God that gave us Christ Who is our 
Saviour and the loving brother of all ? 

Lord, it is my chief complaint 
That my love is weak and faint, 
Yet I love Thee, and adore ; 

O for grace to love Thee more. 


: 

oo) 

im 
ri 


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AM ee 


‘| "y 
LO oe 


ay he bi, 
m Yass w) Re is 





PART II 
CHRISTMAS SERMONS 





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A CHRISTMAS SERMON 


By E. W. Barnes, Sc.D., F.R.S. 


Bishop of Birmingham. 


“* But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them 
in her heart,’—Luke ii. 19. 








A Christmas Sermon 


Ir is sometimes said that religious worship is 
dying out in Europe, at any rate among the more 
civilized peoples and in particular among our- 
selves. If, in demurring, one points to the 
popularity of Christmas, the rejoinder is instantly 
made that Christmas is the festival of mother and 
child, and not specially of the birth of Jesus. To 
some extent the contention holds good. The 
Child in the manger at Bethlehem, His Mother 
bending over Him in love, the Wise Men 
bringing their gifts and the angels singing their 
salutation of peace and good will—all these pic- 
tures symbolize alike our reverence for mother- 
hood and our belief that, if the children could 
preserve, unsullied, the simple goodness that is in 
them, they would avoid our mistakes and bring 
order and peace to the world. 

But it is often forgotten that such reverence 
and faith are peculiarly associated with 
Christ’s teaching. Heathenism of old had 
no festival like Christmas, though coarse 
myths and rites in primitive religion connected 


95 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


human fertility with Nature’s profusion. We 
find no trace of the joy of Christmas in 
any Old ‘Testament ritual. Because Jesus 
extolled the so-called womanly virtues, because 
He insisted that the qualities which good women 
naturally show are of more value than physical 
strength or intellectual power or quick and 
dominating decision—it is, I believe, chiefly 
because this teaching has steadily won acceptance 
that we give to women the honour which we have 
come to regard as their due, and to motherhood 
an especial reverence. It is largely because Jesus 
said: “* Suffer the little children to come unto Me, 
and forbid them not ; for of such is the Kingdom 
of God,” that we turn to the children with 
wistful hope. The Jews put the Garden of Eden 
in the distant past, and thought that only through 
catastrophe could the world be redeemed. For 
other ancient races the Golden Age lay behind the 
dawn of history. Jesus placed it in the future, 
when children should grow up undefiled. So, 
when His disciples disputed as to who should be 
greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, He set a 
little child in the midst of them as a symbol of 
the uncorrupted grace that God desires men to 
gain. If you reflect upon these facts you will 
realize that Christmas is indeed the festival of 
the Spirit of Christ. It has been made by the 


96 


A Christmas Sermon 


power of His teaching. It flourishes because men 
Bnd women, often quite unconsciously, have 
accepted a view of human life and of human 
destiny which came from Him. 

| Every great discovery lights up the thought 
of Christ; and the modern doctrine of 
evolution heirs witness to His wisdom. We 
-are now assured that the future, and not the 
past, holds the perfection of human develop- 
,ment so far as it will be achieved on earth. 
From St. Paul, and the long array of somewhat 
pessimistic theologians, there has come an em- 
phasis on Original Sin, which we now view as 
the inheritance of animal instincts that have not 
been overcome : but we are nearer the thought 
of Jesus when we regard man’s slow evolution 
as the plan of Divine Love. In the progress 
which the children will achieve and in turn hand 
on to their children, we see the nature of Divine 
redemption, the overcoming of evil by good, a 
pledge that God is Love. The children hold the 
keys of the Kingdom of Heaven in so far as that 
Kingdom will ever be established on earth. In 
‘paying homage to them we pay homage to the 
‘progress that shall yet be made, and assert our 
belief that in the natural, no less than in the 
Spiritual, world, good will triumph over evil. And 
the end will be achieved not by any false asceticism, 


oF, G 


| 





Advent and Christmas Sermons 


not by any emptying of life, but by accepting 
natural conditions, of body and soul alike, as part 
of the plan of God; and by so using each that life 
is filled with forgiveness, hope and love. Men 
must trust God as a child trusts father and mother, _ 
must enjoy His gifts with a child’s simplicity, 
must forget injuries with a child’s ready affection, 
must share the child’s eager desire for truth 
unsullied by subtlety or compromise, mus 
call out love and respond to love: _ 
God has made us His sons that we may lov f 
Him. ‘ 
Such was Christ’s teaching : and such is a 










emphasize. As men feel that this teaching i ; 
true, and make it guide their lives ; they > al 


Christmas season the beauty of holiness. | 

Thus, as I muse upon Christmas, I regard con=- 
fident assertions of ‘decay of faith in Christ as- 
false. The outward expression of belief is obvious] y 
changing. Intellectual progress, never more | 
rapid than during the last half-century, has done 
much to alter the scheme of thought in which) 
the Gospel of Christ was cradled. Our liturg y 


A Christmas Sermon 


the children of the New Renaissance to come to 
| our churches to worship God in spirit and in 
truth. But belief in Christ as Way, Truth and 
Life is not really decaying. It will grow pro- 
gressively stronger if the churches concede, or, 
| better, assert that many facts in which our fore- 
fathers believed implicitly we may treat as 
allegories. We know, for instance, that the 
beautiful stories of the Saviour’s early life given 
, by St. Matthew and St. Luke are pronounced by 
ae to be late in origin. The infancy- 

narratives of the two Evangelists can only with 
ag be reconciled. They carry us into a 
} 
t 





region where poetry and romance interpret the 
glory of an unseen world. Their quality differs 
profoundly from that of the sober record of the 
later life of Jesus. Many scholars conclude that 
it is safer to regard them as poetic symbolism 
rather than actual history. Let it be so. Let us 
take the Christmas passage that was read from 
St. Luke this morning, the first twenty verses of 
his second chapter, to be an imaginative picture. 
Is it really of any less value ? Is it not a profoundly 
beautiful study of Christ, which appeals to us all 
because it perfectly embodies spiritual truth? 
| When the Gospels were written Jesus had lived 
and taught and died, perfect in goodness, un- 
‘tivalled in moral insight and moral courage, 


20 


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Advent and Christmas Sermons 


supreme in His constant sense of the Presence 
of God. He had preached the good news, the 
Gospel of salvation; had shown Himself the 
Shepherd of the lost sheep of the world ; had 
proclaimed good tidings of great joy. Men 
through His guidance trod the way of peace: 
the humble and meek through Him felt them- | 
selves enriched as they shared His spiritual 
confidence, His trust in God. His death they had — 
come to regard not as a disgrace or a tragedy, _ 
but as the pledge of God’s love. He, Himself, was | 
the fullness of the Light that lighteth every man | 
that cometh into the world. These are the supreme | 
facts of the Christian revelation, as certain to us 
now as they were to the first two generations of _ 
Christ’s followers. And these facts shine through — 
the stories of the Saviour’s birth. They form, | 
indeed, the very substance of those stories. | 
Take any Christmas-Day story from the Gospels, | 
and you will see in it the interpretation of some 
aspect of the Lord’s wonderful life. Ask yourself | 
why you treasure the picture,'and you will realize | 
that the reason is that it helps you in one par- | 
ticular to understand Jesus better. He Who 
said of Himself: ‘The foxes have holes, the | 
birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of Man | 
hath not where to lay His head,” was born in a 
stable and laid in a manger, for there was no room | 

100 





A Christmas Sermon 


in the inn. He Who proved Himself the promised 
Messiah, great David’s greater Son, was born in 
the royal city of Bethlehem. The birth of Him 
Who was the Good Shepherd, Who laid down 
His life for the sheep, was revealed to shepherds 
protecting their flock by night. The glory of the 
Redeemer Who lived in the presence of God was 
sung by the angels of God. The power of His 
Gospel was proclaimed by the heavenly salutation: 
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth 
peace, good will toward men.” And just as good 
men are drawn to Jesus as to a spiritual magnet, 
so the shepherds came to see the Infant Lord. 
Suppose we refuse to affirm what we cannot 
rigorously prove to be truth. Grant the 
shaping of allegory by popular fancy. We still 
ask—lIs the allegory not perfect? Do we not 
treasure the stories of the Saviour’s birth just 
because they convey spiritual realities that grow 


_ dim when we seek by precise statement to express 





them? The stories, the carols that are founded 
upon them, the hymns which we call the Magnificat 
and the Nunc dimittis, make a never-failing appeal 
because they preserve the essential meaning of 
the Incarnation, of God’s revelation of Himself 
in Jesus. The philosophic theologian will say 
that in Jesus the Word, Who from the beginning 
was with God and was God, came into the world 
IOl 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


to live among men. How can we explain that 
unique outpouring of spiritual reality, that 
revelation of the supernatural, except by allegory 
and poetry °— 


“ How silently, how silently 
The wondrous gift is given ; 
So God imparts to human hearts 
The blessings of His heaven. 


No ear may hear His coming, 
But in this world of sin, 

Where meek souls will receive Him still, 
The dear Christ enters in.” 


Jesus made our Christmas because the whole 
spirit of the day is His. He has taken to Himself 
all the customs with which we surround the 
memory of His birth. Our carols are largely — 
fanciful. Holly and mistletoe are a gift from — 
paganism. So pagan were the associations of — 
mistletoe that even now we hesitate to put it in — 
our churches. We do not actually know the day i 
of the year on which Jesus was born. And yet 
Christmas Day is supremely His—His alone— — 
because it has been consecrated for humanity by — 


His life and love. 


My friends, the greatest truths of all we can 
only feel. We reach them through picture and — 
fancy, through poetry and music. When the mind — 


102 


bit ry Se 


A Christmas Sermon 


is bewildered by shadows, some uplift within us 
reveals the light. ‘There are regions of the world 
of the spirit into which we can only enter if we 
become as little children, content with stories that 
are symbols of what Shorthouse termed “ the 
fathomless infinite beyond.” How can we possibly 
give adequate reasons why Jesus, the Carpenter of 
Nazareth, the obscure Galilean villager, should 
be the central figure in human history ? Did the 
problem escape St. Luke, the cultured Greek 
physician, when he tried to set forth in order 
things most surely believed among us? Is he not 
probably hinting at it when he says that ‘‘ Mary 
kept all these things, and pondered them in her 
heart”? Did she, with her understanding 
quickened by a mother’s love, see through the 
veil of time and space that surrounds us all? 
St. Luke does not say so. She kept these things, 
and pondered them in her heart—and we cannot 
do better. As we, with her, bend over the Manger 
and seek to fathom the mystery of the Incarnation 
it is well if awe, reverence and love combine to 
let us hear the angels’ song. We shall see but 
the resplendent commonplace of mother and 
child unless 


“‘ Karth breaks up, time drops away, 
In flows heaven, with its new day 
Of endless life.” 


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Advent and Christmas Sermons 


The eternal glory of the unseen will be hidden 
from us unless our hearts tell us that the village 
maiden’s child is the new-born King :— | 


“‘ Fark! the herald angels sing: 
Glory to the new-born King.” 


We do not know the Father unless, on Christmas — 
Day, we feel that we are in the presence of Him 
“ Who trod, 
Very Man and very God, 

This earth in weakness, shame and pain; ”” 
of Him Who died upon the Cross, but yet to each” 
one of us | 

“¢ Shall come again, no more to be 


Of captivity the thrall, 
But the one God, All in all.” 


104 





AND O THE DIFFERENCE TO ME! 


By James Brack, D.D. 
Edinburgh. 





“ The Lord Jesus Christ—our hope.” 
1 Timothy i 1. 














And O the Difference to Me! 


I stept : and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. 

It seemed as if twenty centuries had rolled 
back, as one might turn the leaves of a book. I 
was standing on the ancient Appian Way along 
which the might and glory of Rome, in peace and 
war, had passed for generations. Beside me, set 
in the kindly shade of a grove of trees, I descried 
a little moss-covered temple of A#sculapius, the 
god of good gifts. Some stray people, peasants, 
by their dress, were even now seeking the god’s 
graces of health and blessing : and it touched my 
heart to observe their wistful faces and look in 
their anxious eyes. I suppose the ages of the 
world are linked by their sorrows more than by 
anything else. 

As puzzled as any by life’s twisted ways, I 
stayed behind to meet the aged priest. Lan- 
guage, as we know, never causes any difficulty 
in one’s dreams : and so I found myself speaking 
intimately with the old man, whose welcome to 

-me was so kindly, out of eyes burdened with the 
sorrows of his fellow-men. No doubt, my 
questions seemed curious to him, for I could see 

107 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


a puzzled look flitting now and then across his 
face: but he answered me as honestly as he 
could, though clearly wondering at the drift of 
my mind, 

I 
My Questions to the Roman. 


I found that I had three questions which my 
modern soul desired him to answer. 

Thinking of our present-day views of religion, 
I asked him if he and his worshipping people 
honoured and loved their god? In my waking 
moments I can still recall the puzzled look in his 
face as he answered, “ Who ever /oves a god? 
We wisely fear our great and potent Esculapius, 
for he has all the powers of blessing, fortune, and 
health in his hands. These quaint people of 
mine, who are the peasants of the district, come 
here only in trouble or sorrow to appease his 
anger and win back health for themselves or their 
loved ones. If all things go well with my people, 
if they are blessed with the clear red blood of 
youth, if our harvests are rich and tawny, and if 
our health and fortune are untouched, why ! 
they seldom trouble me or the god I serve. 
But—but—I do not know what you mean by 
loving Aesculapius |” 

* 


108 








And O the Difference to Me! 


I turned then and put my second question to 
the old priest. “It is my ignorance, no doubt, 
good priest, but have your people no sense of 
deep spiritual need and some feeling of sin, 
which might bring them here to worship in their 
youth and in their health P_ Do they not steal here 
some day to praise their god and ask pardon for 
their sin?” 

“Sin, stranger! What do you mean by 
sin?” 

“A breach of the will of your god,” I answered 
“a despising and breaking of his holy law.” 

Not easily shall I forget his curious smile. 
“Our god,” he said, “‘ does not work by will or 
by law. Who of us knows which day he will 
be angry, and may curse our fields with blight 
and our bodies with disease? No man can 
know the mind of a god—we can only be chary 
lest we annoy him or unwittingly arouse his 
passionate anger. If you speak about purity and 
matters of right and wrong, these are the affairs 
of State. The laws of conduct are the work of 


_-men and not of the gods. Some of our gods, 


alas—if all tales be true—have little of conduct 
or character to their credit! They live their 
own lives and take their own pleasures: and 


_ we are best pleased when their pleasures occupy 
_ their thoughts and take their minds away from 


109g 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


us. I fear, good stranger, that I do not know 
what you mean by this sense of sin.” 


% * % 


“One thing more, then,” I answered, “ and 
forgive me for my puzzled curiosity. What 
are the hopes of your people for this life and the 
life to come ? What do your worshippers think 
of their eternal souls ? ”’ 


“Perhaps the common people believe in the © 


myth of a future life,” he answered, “‘ but now-a- 


days, no man of culture! Some of our poets 


and philosophers speak of a future life, but they 


have nothing to tell us. And in any case, they © 
are only philosophers and dreamers! The creed — 
of my god A®sculapius—(who, I am proud to © 
say, has the largest following in Italy)—lies in 


this simple idea—make your days here as full, 


as rich, as merry, as ‘healthful as you can, for at © 
the best your time is brief and death soon over- — 
takes all. Therefore, our great good is sound — 


health and happy living. The weak, the bur- 


dened and the bereaved P—Oh, that is sad, no | 
doubt : but what can one do? Our lot is woven ~ 


from the web, and happy is he who has health 


and glad days. That is all. We have this short — 


life, and we know of no other. It is wisdom 
therefore, to seize each day. We feel that it is bad - 
110 





And O the Difference to Me! 


fuck for the poor and the broken. But it is the 
lot of the gods—what more can we say?” 


II 
My Questions to the Few. 


I reached the road again from the little shrine, 
somewhat sad and disillusioned, I fear. It all 
seemed so cruel, and aimless, and indiscriminate. 
I felt as if life were just an accident, and in 
most cases an unlucky accident. What better 
was I than a glorified beast of the field? And 
was I “glorified ?”—for, at least, the beasts had no 

_ torturing questions and no foolish dreams that 
were born only to be strangled. As one or two 
anxious-faced people turned into the little bypaths 
leading to the shrine, I looked back and muttered: 
“Vain hope and vain desire !”’ 

I had not gone far along the Appian Way again, 
when I met a bustling company of soldiers walk- 
ing in loose order, with a man in their midst, 
apparently a prisoner. As they were going Rome- 
wards, I turned and joined them. By the 
courtesy of their captain, | was permitted to 
chat with them and particularly to enter into 

_ talk with the man whom they were escorting. 

A rather remarkable fellow, I found, a Jew, 

_ poorly clad, not over-strong in body. He was 

being taken from Jerusalem to be tried in the 

III 





Advent and Christmas Sermons 


Roman courts, for although he was a Jew, he was 
also a Roman citizen; and he had claimed the 
privilege of imperial rather than provincial justice. 
It seemed from the talk of the soldiers that the 
man had little chance of a reprieve or a release ; 
but this did not seem to discompose him, for 
I have seldom met one whose face was so strong 
or so happy. ‘The soldiers had learned to respect 
and admire the poor enfeebled man, for they 
spoke openly of his courage and help during 
some great disaster which had been experienced 
on their voyage. 

I hardly know what influenced me, perhaps 
my troubled spirit and my sense of depression 
after my visit to the ancient temple, but to my 
own amazement I found myself talking to this 
hirpling prisoner on the same topics as had moved 
my soul in the company of the old priest. (Each 


one of us knows how we invariably work con- — 


versation round to the questions that burden 
our hearts.) 


I had asked him the first question, somewhat — 
difidently ; Since he was most likely going to — 
die, did he have any god whom he could love ~ 


and honour, and whose spirit might be a comfort 
to his soul ? 
112 


ee 


SS 








And O the Difference to Me! 


“ Do I ‘love and honour’ my God ?”’ he cried, 


_“ Why ! I am here in these bonds, and glorying 


in them, because I have preached the wonder and 
glory of His Name all over Asia. He is every- 
thing to me, and I am nothing without Him. 
I do not boast, but I say calmly that I have gladly 
given up everything for His loved Name. ‘The 
very thought of Him is a joy in my heart.” —He 
broke into a kind of rhapsody, a lyric of rapture 
about this God he adored—His worth, His 
goodness, His beautiful mercy, and His as- 
tonishing remembrance. “It is my joy,” he 
cried, “my joy unspeakable; and, stranger, I 
would that thou wert altogether such as I am, 


except these bonds.” 
* * * 


The rapture of the broken prisoner was so 
amazing, that I felt I was in the presence of the 
only power that could lift a man above his cir- 
cumstances, and make him master of his own 
soul. ‘The contrast was ludicrous—a prisoner 
in chains, going to a certain death, and the clear 
exultation of a soul set free. Whether true or 
false, his faith was clearly something that could 
redeem. 

So I plied him with that second question, which 


‘the old priest had answered so hopelessly. “<‘A 


sense of need?’ ‘A sense ofsin?’’”’ he answered. 
113 H 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


“ T am full of it, crushed with it! When I think 
of my sins, I feel that I am the most unworthy of 
men, one who deserves only to be a castaway. 
But yet my God, for love’s sweet sake, will receive - 
me. He has declared His love and His pardon. | 
If only I turn to Him, He will forgive me and — 
cleanse me—and more, He will give me power _ 
to do better. My sin is great—none can feel it © 
more—but the goodness of my Master is 
greater. ee cannot know,” laying his hand on — 
my arm, ‘‘ what a complete peace it gives me to ie 
know that my God makes me welcome, and will — 
give me power to live my life in purer and finer 
ways.” i 
te % ” | 
Knowing that he was going to Rome to be — 
tried for life or death, I asked him the third — 
question with all the hesitation one can imagine. j 
It seemed a kind of impertinence to speak of this — 
life, and the life to come, to a man who could not i 
be sure how long he had to live! But when I 
think of his answer to-day, in my waking hours, — 
I rejoice that I overcame my diffidence: for in” 
replying to this last query of mine, he seemed tom 
forget himself completely, forget himself and his — 
chains. j 
“For your third question, good stranger, I 
have only this answer—here am I, going to Rome, ~ 


114 














And O the Difference to Me! 


a journey that may mean my end; but though 
I have no wish to die, I have equally no fear to 
die. For one like me, by the goodness of the 
Lord I love, to die is gain : for I look forward to 
a fuller and richer life in the presence of my God. 
I have no fear—why should I have? It does 
not matter what hardships assault me in this life— 
I know that underneath me are the everlasting 
arms of my Father. Far less does the future 
affright me, for my life here and always lies in His 
gentle hands. There is nothing unknown in the 
future, for God is there, awaiting me. Death 
to me is the coming of the Dawn—stranger, 
farewell |” 
Il 

My Questions to Myself. 

I awoke from my dream, and I knew that these 
two men with whom my spirit had conversed 
_ were worlds apart. Then I perceived that the 
real and only line of difference, | ke a chalk-line 
' through the world, is a man’s faith. We may 
_ divide the world into what classes we will, rich 
and poor, wise and simple, ancient and modern ; 
but now I know that there are only two great 
classes—those who know Christmas and a Cross, 
and those who do not ! 

And I asked myself these questions, with a 
| mew meaning in my heart :— 


IIS 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


What do we owe to that Christmas Child who 
came bringing the knowledge of God and life 
to our needy hearts ? | 

What would this world be, in its deepest per- — 
plexities, without the hope and the faith of Jesus, 
who has shown us that we are the sons of God’s 
love? 

And what can I say for myself, as I think of the | 
Light of His truth, except this—“ And O- 
the difference to me |” 





116 


THE NAME WONDERFUL 


By J. Gorper Burns, B.D. 
Glasgow. 





“ And His Name shall be called Wonderful.” 
—lIsaiah ix. 6, 


es 








The Name Wonderful 


Jesus has been the centre of the world’s thought 
for nineteen hundred years, and He is as truly an 
object of wonder to-day as He was to the first 
impressive group that gathered round the Holy 
Family, and bent forward open-eyed to look upon 
Him nestling in His mother’s bosom, During all 
these Christian centuries there has not been a single 
- faithful follower in any department of the business 
of the Kingdom, who has ever ceased to wonder 
at Jesus. He may have wearied, for a space, of 
his work ; he may have found himself asking 
whether the never-ending service was worth 
while ; the apparently meagre fruition from his 
labours may even have induced in him a spirit of 
_trebelliousness ; in the course of his life many 
theories, points of view and lines of action 
formerly cherished may have been abandoned as 
of little account, until to the outward eye he seemed 
‘no longer the manner of man he had been ; but 
his sense of wonder at Jesus has ever’survived all 
these fluctuations, and, if temporarily stayed, has 
_ but returned to hold him with greater ascendancy. 


119 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


“Wonders will never cease ”’ is a colloquialism — 
that is true in life universally. It is true pre- — 
eminently of Jesus. To most people the Christian 
life consists of prayer and study of the mind of 
the Master, the Church with its worship, work 
and sacraments, and the honest endeavour to do the ~ 
will of Christ in the vocation which they follow. 
It is not surprising that a feeling of dissatisfac- 
tion, and even of discouragement, sometimes 
supervenes. But it is a general experience that 
when the vault of heaven is at its darkest a ray 
of light pierces the gloom, at first little more than ~ 
the tiniest pin-point, but soon growing in steadi- 
ness and power until it focusses the attention like — 
a fixed star, and that star is just the “ Wonderful- 
ness of Jesus.” 

Let us then, this Christmas season, dwell for a_ 
little on “The Name Wonderful,” selecting from 
the many volumes in which it may be studied 
the Book of the Gospels, the Book of History 
and the Book of Personal Experience. t 

1. One fact appears in response to even 
cursory examination of the Gospel records, which 
is, that wherever Jesus appeared He impressed, 
Sometimes the response was hostility, sometimes 
impatience, often it was shame and penitence, 
always it was a challenge to the conscience of 
befogged formalism and easy-going carelessness, 

I20 













The Name Wonderful 


and in many an instance His appeal kindled the 
flame of a life-long devotion. But if there is one 
word which applies to every case—the conscience- 
stricken, the penitent, the admiring, the aspiring, 
the critical and the hostile alike—that word is 
“wonder.” Again and again it may be read that 
“they marvelled at Him.” From the shepherds at 
the manger to the centurion at the Cross, every- 
one who came into contact with Him was not 
merely interested, intrigued, or arrested, but was 
stirred by a dominating sense of wonder. “* What 
manner of man is this?” was a question con- 
stantly on their lips. ‘“‘ Who is this?” was the 
exclamation that arose from the Holy City as 
from one man, that day He entered. The like 
of this had never been witnessed. They wondered 
at His speech. Many things the world heard from 
Him for the first time, and what was not actually 
new was restated with an emphasis that was 
altogether original. They wondered at His 
deportment and attitude. Here was One Who 
looked at things from a new angle, and Whose 
actions contravened the conventions and cate- 
gories which had hitherto been accepted without 
demur. They wondered most of all at the Man 
Himself, His character and personality. <A 
phenomenon had appeared on the earthly stage. 
Here was One Who not merely taught a new kind 
I2I 


Advent and Christmas- Sermons 


of “ goodness,” but was that “ Goodness ” Him-_ 


self. Patience and intolerance, love and hatred, 
the weakness of a woman and the might of a hero, 
magnanimity, gentleness, love of life, sweetness 
and beauty, energy, repose, laughter and tears, 
all were included. ‘“‘ What manner of man is 
this?’ Do we wonder that they wondered P 
Yes, these were wonderful years. If the 


Gospels tell us anything, and suggest anything © 


to the devout imagination, it is that during His 
ministry His companions went about with Him 
in open-eyed amazement. There were no two 


days alike. They were walking on air. They 


pilgrimed in an enchanted land. They never © 


knew what He would do next. The atmosphere 
was electrical with all manners of possibilities. 
From a situation in which they found themselves 


He always emerged by a way which they would © 
never have guessed. When, in their dealings with — 
people, they would have been indulgent, He was . 
severe, and when they thought to do right by © 
being censorious, He was personified love. He — 
was a constant enigma to them. A thousand times — 


He left them puzzled. Till the very end He was 


an unplumbed mystery. And yet they never felt 


ti 


in this the slightest inconsistency, never a shadow ~ 


of incongruity. Thinking of it afterwards they 


M 
if 
> 
ry 


admitted in their hearts that every day and in every — 


122 


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The Name Wonderful 


way He was just what He ought to have been, and 
not many days of that ministry were required in 
order that they should be bound to Him in indis- 
soluble ties. Is it to be wondered at that, when 
the crucial question arose, as sooner or later it 
was bound to arise—‘‘ Who is this wonder- 
Person ? ”—it could be answered in only one way 
adequately P 

2. The same story is told in the larger Book 
of History, the same record of sustained wonder. 
All through these nineteen hundred years men 
have not ceased to wonder at Jesus, and to sub- 
scribe to the name which Isaiah, by anticipation, 
gave Him. Nor is this surprising. What changes 
these centuries have witnessed—wars, reformations, 
revolutions, world-shaking cataclysms !| Dynasties 
have arisen, and, their brief life ended, have passed 
away. Great empires have been built up, and, as 
the centre of power has shifted, have crumbled. 
The treasures of the world have been steadily 
augmented, and to man’s untiring intellect the 
universe has yielded up many of its secrets. The 
earth has been explored to almost every corner, 
and the forces of Nature have been summoned 
from their hiding-places to do man’s bidding. 


A newer, softer spirit has been breathed into the 


higher civilizations, and many projects for man- 
kind’s benefit have been framed, have swept 
123 


~ 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


away opposition, and have been carried into effect. 
And yet it is the bare truth to say that over all 
the bewildering complexity of these nineteen 
centuries, above the storm as above the calm, 
one Figure presides in serene, majestic isolation— 
not a king, a philosopher, a poet, a statesman, 
a financier, a trader, or a war-lord, but Jesus, He 
who began His earthly career as the Babe of 
Bethlehem, and Whose pierced hand has directed 
the currents of the centuries and commands 
the ages for evermore. 

You are sceptical about it? Very well. Take 
the events of the first thirty years of this era as 
recorded in the Gospels. Do they, or do they not, 
contribute an important factor in determining the 
course of subsequent history? “If Christ had 
not come ”’—there is a theme for a thrilling 
Christmas sermon! If Christ had not come, 
would literature have been quite the same? 
Think it well out—literature. Or architecture, or 
music, or painting, or education, or the theory 
and art of government, or the whole round of life, 
or even men and women, would these—would 
anything have been quite the same ? To state the 
question is to answer it. From even imagining 
the awful alternative we recoil in horror. Tower- 
ing above the ages, He has exerted an all-per- 
vading influence. At the council board of kings, 

124. 


— 


The Name Wonderful 


in the chambers where far-reaching decisions 
have been taken, behind the reformer’s zeal, in 
the mind of thinker and artist, explorer, discoverer 
and inventor, on the plains where resounding 
battles have been lost and won, everywhere 
throughout these spaces of history, Jesus the 
Wonderful, Whose presence men admit although 
His Personality they cannot understand, answers 
the roll-call with an affirmative ‘‘ I am here.” 
The fact is that there is not a single page of 
history on which, if we look long enough, He is not 
to be found. Paul wrote of the pre-Christian ages 
that the whole creation had been groaning and 
travailing in pain, and the only key to the com- 
plex mystery of these early times was that, however 
puzzling the succeeding events and phases may 
have appeared to the various actors in the drama, 
the stage was all the time in process of being set 
for the coming of Jesus. It is a noble theory. 


But with equal force it may be asserted that Jesus 


is the only key to the past nineteen centuries. 









~The person who takes his stand on the vantage 


ground of the present and peers back into the 
receding shadows of the past, until his wet and 
_wearied eyes give up the quest, need not despair. 
Jesus is the key. Nothing happens by chance. 
There is an end in view. In ways we cannot 
understand everything has been making, is 
125 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


making, its contribution to the time when His 
will shall be done on earth. “‘ He is in the world 
subduing it unto Himself.” Is the wonder of 
Jesus lessened or increased when we follow His 
personality across the pages of this open book ? 
Is it a thing to be marvelled at that many of the 
most illustrious representatives of the human 
race, with few, if any, pretentions to a place 
among His disciples, desirous rather to preserve 
an appearance of neutrality, have been among the 
first to accord Him the supreme place? 

3. Our divisions are not strictly delimited. 
The Book of the Gospels is a section of the Book 
of History, and both are pages from the Book of - 
Experience. But it is the Book of personal 
religious experience which I have in view, and I 
make no apology for the climactic statement that 
it is in this volume that Jesus appears most 
wonderful of all. y 

Knowledge is of various types, but the highest | 
is that which is built up on personal experience. — 
Religion is in a sense knowledge, and, needless _ 
to say, it lays down personal experience as an 
absolute condition. In other words, a man may _ 
have a very fair knowledge of Jesus as He appears 
in the Book of the Gospels, and a more than fair 
acquaintance with Jesus as He is met on every 
page of the Book of History, and yet be without | 
126 





eee SRS 


! 








The Name Wonderful 


that knowledge of Jesus that alone matters. The 
indispensable condition of being sealed to the 
brotherhood is that a man know Jesus at first 
hand. He is to “‘say these things of himself, 
not because another hath told it concerning him.” | 
Against this law annoyance and stormy protest 
are of not the slightest avail. The Faith is reached 
by one road only, that of personal experience, and 
such experience always implies an attitude of devo- 
tion on the part of the soul to its Lord. 

When this happy relationship has been set up 
the Christian life begins, and a book is gradually 
compiled in which the wonder of Jesus breaks 
out in a great and ever greater blaze of 
glory. In this precious book we have all that 
Jesus was in the Book of the Gospels and in the 
Book of History. But there is much besides. 


| How wonderful, for one thing, Jesus is in what 


He does for the Christian! This has been the 
never-failing theme of our best-loved hymn 
Writers, and perhaps the last word on the matter 
‘Was uttered by St. Paul when he summed it up 
jas “ The love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” 
To him it was the “ wonder of wonders.” It is 
ho exaggeration to say that it is the personal 
experience of every Christian man and woman 
that there is not a single need of the human heart 
that Jesus is not prepared, and is not adequate, 
127 











Advent and Christmas Sermons 


to meet. How wonderful Jesus is in the way in 
which He opens the door to everyone! Many a 
master mind has made a bid for leadership in the 
intellectual and spiritual domain, but as often as 
not all but the wise and the rich, the strong and 
the gifted, have been warned away. Jesus dis- 
penses with all the ordinary demands and con- 
ditions. He asks only one question—He does not 
even ask it, He lets man ask it of himself—whether 
the heart is attracted by His loveableness. And 
just because the heart in its deepest needs is 
universally the same, wealth and poverty, learning 
and ignorance, power and weakness, position and 
obscurity, enter hand in hand. 

How wonderful Jesus is in the way in which 
He keeps hold of the heart that has once loved 
Him! Other interests receive the attention, and 
sooner or later pass as if they had never been, 
Other personalities may receive even a measure 
of hero-worship, but the spell breaks, and we 
awaken to ask ourselves by what strange possi- 
bility it ever existed. Jesus, once loved, never lets 
go His hold. 

How wonderful He is in the progressive 
revelation of Himself to those who company with 
Him! There are people one meets for a chance 
half-hour, and in that brief space you seem to 
have learned all there is to be known about them, — 

128 


TSS SCC 





ST 


The Name Wonderful 
They are like the isolated hillock, which you 


locate, and measure, and walk around, and over, 
and afterwards, there being nothing more left to 
explore, you go on to the next. But Jesus in the 
myriad features of His personality, as unfolded 
in the experience of the Christian, resembles a 
great mountain range. At the beginning of his 
adventure the disciple is merely among the 
foot-hills, but as he steadily follows the ascending 
pathway of obedience and service, one mighty 
mountain mass lifts itself above another, and I 
would fain believe that even if the upward road 
continued throughout eternity there would always 
be peaks beyond ! That explains why there are 
so many portraits of Jesus. The devoutartist is but 
setting forth the aspect of Our Lord which has 


_ become visible and impressive to him, at the point 


of the journey at which he has arrived. To the 


_ youth entering on his novitiate He reveals Himself 


in one phase, to the saint who has known Him long 
in another, but to both He is a never-failing 
source of wonder. At four-score years the 
Christian is still surprising himself with new 
discoveries in Jesus. 

And to think that in order to keep His place 
permanently as the world’s supreme wonder, 
Jesus has required nothing to be added or super- 
imposed, no reinforcement, no “ new features ” 

129 I 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


of any kind ! Heis the same. In his poor wisdom 
man has made many additions until it is some- 
times difficult to recognize the Jesus of the sects 
and the Jesus of the Gospels as one and the same 
Person. But all this is as needless as it is useless. 
The Jesus of Peter, James and John has sufficed, 
and shall suffice, to fulfil Isaiah’s prophecy. 
“His name shall be called Wonderful.” Are 
we not grateful to the prophet that, when sheer 
inability to enumerate and describe the qualities 
of his Dream-man cast him back on general 
terms, he gave play to his emotions and set down 
this alluring word ? It was a confession of failure 


on his part. He had done his best to describe the — 


figure seen in his vision and he had despaired of 


his best, and so he summed it all up in a general © 


description. We thank God for it. Jesus has 


many names, and every name a lode-star, but this 
is the best of all, for it is not a name but merely 


a suggestion, the effulgence that all the others 


radiate. 


There is comfort in the word. We lookat Jesus, — 
and although always spell-bound, we are some- 
times non-plussed, mystified. We know now that _ 
it is all in the plan, that it was never intended that _ 
we should fully understand our Lord. If we 
understood Him, He would cease to be wonderful, — 


and if He were no longer wonderful, He would 


130 


yu}: 


The Name Wonderful 


not be “ He that should come,” and we would 
* look for another.” 

There is salvation in the word. Thesearedays 
when all the artificial buttresses of the Faith are 
crumbling. And woe betide the man who has 
been depending on them! But if you would 
be safe, here is the central pillar of the edifice, 
here is the link that will not snap, the anchor that 
will not drag, the fort that no assault can ever 
overwhelm, the Wonderfulness of Jesus! Renew 
your sense of wonder at the manger this Christmas 
Day, follow Him with the apostles, travel with 
Him down the centuries, behold Him in the 
pages of your own experience, cast your gaze 
over the intervening spaces towards that time 
when He shall be All in All. Never are you 
more truly a Christian than when “ Lost in 
wonder, love and praise.” 


131 





‘ 5 d . 
, 5 
‘ 
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THE TWO CENSUS BOOKS 


By H. C. Carrer, M.A. 
Cambridge. 


“ There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that 
all the world should be enrolled.”’—Luke i. 1. 


“ They which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” 
Rey. xxic273 





The Two Census Books 


THESE two texts bring before our mind two 
Census books. I want you to consider what we 
may learn from thinking of them. 

One of them stands at the very beginning of the 
Gospel. Weare introduced to it in the Christmas 
story which tells us of the birth of Jesus. Cesar 
Augustus, Tiberius Cesar, second in order of 
the Emperors of Rome, decided to make a 
census of the inhabitants of all his provinces. The 
people were to report themselves in their own 
native places—at any rate, so far as the Jews of 
Palestine were concerned. ‘The purpose of the 
census was probably that the people might be 
registered, to be assessed for taxation. Joseph, 
being a native of Bethlehem, went for enrolment 
there, with Mary, his wife. There, immediately 
after their arrival, Jesus was born. He must 
have been entered on the census. That was the 
first book in which the name of Jesus Christ was 
written—the Name that is now above every name. 

The other census book stands at the end of the 


135 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


Gospel. It is a book written in Heaven. Jesus’ 


name is inscribed on the outside of this book. 
He has many names that go to make up that 
name above every name. He is Jesus, the 
Saviour; He is Christ, the Anointed King ; 
He is the Good Shepherd ; He is the Light of 
the World ; He is the Bright and Morning Star. 
But on this book, where His name is written to 
show that He is the owner of it, the name is written 
that speaks the most wonderfully of all those He 
bears of His gentleness and readiness to suffer— 
the Lamb of God. It is ‘the Lamb’s”’ book of life. 
As in Cesar’s book, the names of all who are alive 
are written there. It is His book of Life. 


I 
Think of this, then, first: the Gospel begins 
with the name of Jesus Christ being written 
among the people living in the world—written 
there almost as soon as He was born. Strange 
and wonderful discoveries of old eastern docu- 


ments—many of them much older than the time of 


Christ—have been made before this. I wonder 

if it is possible that some day there might be dis- 

covered the page of that book in which Joseph’s 

and Mary’s name and Jesus’ are entered, that 

Cesar might know how many subjects he had in 

Bethlehem. Probably it was not made of any 
136 


: 






. 


: 





The Two Census Books 


parchment durable enough to survive long, and 
ages ago it was lost, or perished. But there it was, 
written among the facts of the world’s history: 
Jesus, male child born to Mary, wife of Joseph, 
at Bethlehem. Did she record that He was born 
in a stable because there had been no room for 
them in the crowded inn? But there it was 
written. It reminds us that the Gospel of Jesus 


Christ began in an event of history that could take 


its place among the world’s records of fact. We 


date our years from that fact. Every time we 


write a letter or enter a payment in a ledger, we 


testify that a change came for the world when 
Jesus was born. Human history began again 


then. The years before did not count; so men 
felt who had come to know what the birth of 


Jesus meant for the world. It was the greatest 


event in human history—the birth of Jesus. 
Have you ever tried to think how different our 
lives would have been if Jesus had not been born— 
if that event which could be written down as a 
fact in Cesar’s census book had not happened ? 


We cannot think of it. We only know that there 
is hardly anything of all that we reckon most 
precious in our lives that we cannot trace back to 


that fact. It has made our homes what they have 
been in purity and tenderness ; it has given us 
all that is strongest and sweetest in the influences 


137 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


that have been round our lives from babyhood. All 
our best thoughts of God, all our hopes of Heaven 
have come from that. Most of our consolations in 
this world, and our visions of a better world 
beyond this, have their origin there. The cradle 
of Jesus has proved to be the cradle of the world’s — 
true hopes and joys. All that is best for man _ 
began when Jesus was born. : 

And the other book is at the ed of the Gospel. 
“They that are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” 
What is the end of it all? What is the purpose 
that is being worked out among us and in us, in — 
all this drama of human life in which we play our _ 
parts? If the wonderful things written in this ; 
New Testament are true, the end of it is that a__ 
people is to be gathered home to God, in which 
we may have our part ; a people whose names can 
be written down as those who are alive. Alive, 
after what we call death is done with, looked back 
upon as one of the incidents of the past. And it 
is ‘‘ the Lamb’s book of life.” The secret of life 
has been given them by Jesus, the Lamb of God. 
They are His people, their life is owing to Him 
and owed to Him. It will not do only to look 
backward to discover what Christianity means. 
What is a Christian? There are two ways of 
telling that story, of answering that question—both 
have to go together to make up the true answer. 

138 


| 
| 






The Two Census Books 


A Christian is one who has come under the 
influence of that past fact that Jesus Christ came 
into the world: one whose life has been changed, 
as all our lives have been changed, changed in 
many ways from misery to happiness, because 
Jesus Christ came into the world. Millions of 
people are outside Christianity still—they have 
never come under the advantages of that healing 
change. And it is the more disgrace to us who 
have come under them. We care so little. They 
are still in darkness and the shadow of death. 
They do not know the Fatherhood of God. We 
do not realize how dark the world is where 
Christ has not come to be known. You and I 
have been Christians all our lives in this first 
sense. The truth and benefits of Christianity have 
wrapped our lives round from the beginning. But 
all this, all the difference that it makes—that it 
has made to us—to have been born and brought 
up in a Christian land, that is all the work of the 
past upon us, something given to us from outside. 
And in the end we may be none the better for it. 
What is a Christian? There must be another 
answer that looks forward to the end. Shall we 
five then? At the end stands that book of life— 
the life that has been saved to endure by Christ, 
the Lamb of God. Will our names be in that 
book ? Shall we live with Him? 


139 


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~— 








Advent and Christmas Sermons © 
I z 
But now, you will say, I am playing with | 
the notion of these two census books in an unjus-_ 
tifiable way. There is no real parallel hela 
them. ‘The one was an actual book spoken of in” 
a record of actual history ; ; the other is only 
spoken of by a figure, a piece of imagery, in a 
book of visions ae imagination. Yes, and I 
want you to think about that difference between — 
the two books. ‘The one was an actual book—_ 
written with ink that you could see, on paper 
you could handle—that book of Tiberius Ceesar’s, ” 
When it was written, it was sent up by the regis- 
trar in Bethlehem to Cesarea, or wherever the 
Palestine headquarters was, and then posted with — 
other books to Antioch perhaps, the chief city of © 
the province of Syria (to which Palestine belonged) © 
and then perhaps to Rome, to be kept among the 
imperial archives. It was an actual thing. Yes, 
and being actual it was temporary. How long” 
do you suppose it was of any use, or of the slightest — 
interest to anybody? ‘That census would be no ~ 
use after a generation or so had passed. They 
would need to make another. And it would bea 







preserved—they would soon be lumber, quite 
worthless. % 
The other book is not an actual book—no, it © 
140 





The Two Census Books 


is a book which is a spiritual fact, that could only 
| be spoken of by a picture borrowed from material 
things. ‘The Lamb’s book of life.” There 
was no paper or ink that that book was ever made 
of, except in the Apostle’s vision. It is an 
imaginary book. 

But which of the two books do you think really 
endures the longer—which of the two needs more 
to be reckoned with now, or will need to 
be reckoned with in ages to come? The 
Spiritual fact is much more enduring than the 
material. ‘The book that could only be spoken 
of in picture, which no eye could ever look upon, 
is much more real than the other which was the 
tangible record of Cesar’s great dominions. 
“The things which are seen are temporal, but the 
things which are not seen are eternal.” 

Cesar’s census book has perished; ‘the 
Lamb’s book of life’”’ remains. It was an accident 
of time and circumstance that decided whose 
mames were written in that book of Cesar’s ; 
just those who happened to be living on the earth, 
within the lands of the Roman Empire, when it 
was compiled. How much does that really 
matter when the whole of human history is 
viewed? But it is no accident that decides 
whose names are written in that other unseen 
book. It is the book of eternal destiny. It is 


141 








Advent and Christmas Sermons 


the book of human character. Not time or : 
circumstance determines that. Those whose 
names Christ writes there are written there for 
ever. That book will remain for men and angels _ 
to read for all eternity. 

It reminds us how little the things of this 
world matter in themselves. They matter only 
as they lead on to the things above and beyond | 
this world. All the entries of our life on earth 
will soon be forgotten in this world’s reckoning, 
Every paper that bears our name, unless we are 
among the few famous ones of the earth, will 
soon be destroyed past all recovery. The in-. 
scriptions on our tombstones will not be kept fresh 
and clear to read very long. The things that are 
seen are temporal. But there is an entry that will 





not perish. Will our name be written there? 


III 
But now think of one other thing of which 
these two census books remind us. Whose 
are they? Cesar’s, and Christ’s. The one: 
belonged to Cesar ; the other belongs to Christ. 
The name of Jesus was written in Czsar’s book. 
He was entered as one of Cesar’s subjects. All 
whose names were there belonged to Cesar,—so_ 
he reckoned. Is Cesar’s name written in Christ’s 
book—in “the Lamb’s book of life?’? We do not. 

142 


—— 





The Two Census Books 


know. But which thing matters most? Was it 
an honour for Jesus to be written down among 
the subjects of Tiberius? Or do we think it 
was an honour for Tiberius, had he known it, to 
have Jesus’ name there? ‘There can be no doubt 
about our answer to that. Andif Tiberius’ name 
is not in Jesus’ book, which is it the worse for, 
Jesus or Cesar? Does it not make us feel, as we 
think of it, how shallow and trumpery the world’s 
judgments are? For Cesar seemed to be the great 
king, and Jesus—what did He seem then, and 
for so long as Tiberius lived? A despised 
member of a despised race; one whom even 
that race despised, and hated so that they got 
Cesar’s deputy to make away with Him. Yet He 
is on the throne, and it is before Him that Cesar’s 
claims come to be tested. 

Would we rather be written down in Cesar’s 
book or in Christ’s? Czesar’s books are still 
being compiled—the books of the powers of this 


_ world : census books, books of honour, books of 
_ privilege, books of fame. Would we rather be 


written down in ¢hem, or in “the Lamb’s book of 
life?’”? Would we rather be written a patriotic 
citizen of the British Empire or a faithful Chris- 
tian? We may have to choose between them. 
Would we rather be written a successful man or 
woman, or a true follower of Jesus? We may 


143 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


have to choose between them. Which counts 
more with us, to win the world’s ‘‘ well done,” or — 
Christ’s ? We may have to choose one and © 
abandon the other. : 

Jesus Christ’s is the only book of fe. ‘“‘ Thou © 
hast a name that thou livest and art dead ”—those — 
are awful words, but they must be spoken to us, ; 
if we get the world’s reward, but reject the follow- _ 
ing of Jesus. Jesus Christ’s is the only book of © 
life. The only real life comes through living in é 
the power of His life, which is the power of love. — 


See 















We are keeping Christmas again. And as it 
comes, with its wonderful message, so incredible q 
to the world’s judgment—still, for all the easy — 
professions of belief in it—the message that in — 
that baby born in the Bethlehem stable, and in that — 
carpenter of Nazareth, and in that nameless 
Galilean preacher, and in that man suffering as © 
a common criminal upon the Cross, tricked and ~ 
hunted to death by religious men with a crowd to _ 
help them with their fickle shouting, was the ~ 
incarnate God, whose love, shown in all that life © 
of sorrow and that death of shame, redeems the 
world—it comes with a great call to us, putting 
before us a new opportunity, to choose which’ 
way shall be ours : to go with Him by faith, or 
to go with the world. : 


144 


The Two Census Books 


Faith in Him is conquest—spiritual conquest, 
There is a greater war to win than any that is 
waged on earthly battlefields, the war against 
our unbelief : we each have to fight it out on the 
battlefield of our hearts. 

Let me, as I close, read to you from the 
Pilgrim’s Progress—a book whose truth does not 
wear out : 

“ I saw also that the Interpreter took Christian 
again by the hand and led him into a pleasant 
place, where was builded a stately palace, beau- 
tiful to behold ; at the sight of which Christian 
was greatly delighted ; he saw also upon the top 
thereof certain persons walked who were clothed 
all in gold. Then said Christian, may we go in 
thither? Then the interpreter took him and led 
him up toward the door of the palace ; and behold 
at the door stood a great company of men, as 
desirous to go in, but durst not. There also sat 
a man at a little distance from the door, at a table 
side, with a book and his inkhorn before him, to 
take the name of him that should enter therein : 
he saw also that in the doorway stood many men 
in armour to keep it, being resolved to do the 
man that would enter what hurt and mischief they 
could. Now was Christian somewhat in a muse : 
at last when every man started back for fear of the 
med men, Christian saw a man of a very 


145 K 












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Advent and Christmas Sermons 


stout countenance come up to the man that sat 
there to write, saying, ‘ Set down my name, Sir’ 5 
the which, when he had done, he saw the man 
draw his sword and put an helmet on his head and — 

rush toward the door upon the armed men, who ; 
laid upon him with deadly force ; but the man 

not at all discouraged, fell to cutting and hackiaa 
most fiercely ; so after he had received and given © 
many wounds to those that attempted to keep 
him out, he cut his way through them all, and 
pressed forward into the palace, at which there 
was a pleasant voice heard from those that were 
therein, even of the Three that walked upon the 
top of the palace :— 






Come in, Come in, 
Eterna: Glory thou shalt win. 


So he went ia and was clothed with such garments 
as they. Then Christian smiled and said, ‘I 
think verily I know the meaning of this.’ ”’ 

I wonder, do we know the meaning of it ? 


146 





THE PEOPLE WHO GREETED 
THE INFANT JESUS 


By R. C. Gri, M.A., D.C.L. 
Marylebone. 










“And there were in the same country shepherds 
abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock 
by night.’—Luke ii. 8. i 


“ Now when Fesus was bornin Bethlehem of Fudea 
in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise 
men from the east to Ferusalem.’—Miatt. i. 1. 


“ And, behold, there was a manin Jerusalem, whose 
name was Simeon ; and the same man was just and 
devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel.” 


—Luke ii. 25. 





The People Who Greeted the Infant Jesus 


THERE was a poor welcome for the Christ child, 
but it is a mistake to say there was none. ‘There 
were a few watchers for the dawn, and there were 
others who, though unexpectant, were ready to 
greet Him when the tidings of His birth came. 
Those who “‘ waited for the consolation of Israel ” 
were on the watch-tower in the temple at Jeru- 
salem ; the star-gazers of Chaldea were scanning 
the skies for some token of hope, and the Shep- 
herds of Bethlehem, these sentinels of the night, 
startled by the great news in the midst of ordinary 
service, hastened to the babe in the manger. 

It is noteworthy that the three groups who 
_ gathered round the infant Christ each represented 
a different class and a different type of mankind. 
To each group a differing token of the new 
Presence was granted. 

The Shepherds represent the toilers of earth, 
men who work with their hands and have most 
to do with the physical side of life. ‘To them was 
given the sign most readily recognized—the 
_ angels’ glory and the angels’ song. It was a 


149 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


sign to eye and ear and mind, impossible to 
mistake. 

The “‘ wise men” represent the students of 
the world, the observers and thinkers. To them 
was granted a sign which was discernible by the 
eye, but required interpretation by the mind. 

Thirdly, the group of aged, pious people; the 
little circle within a circle with the temple as their 
centre, represent the devout and discerning of — 
spirit: for them there was no sign save an — 
inward token, a spiritual assurance. 


I 


Romance has gathered round the figure of the © 
Shepherd in the New Testament, especially — 
because Our Lord pictured Himself under this ~ 
form as the great protective personality. It — 
requires an effort to disrobe these watchers of the © 
flock at Bethlehem of unreal glamour. But we © 
miss something of truth unless we remember that 
this first Christmas night began just as hundreds — 
of other nights had begun, and the Shepherds were — 
busy with their ordinary occupation just as usual. 
They were simple people, with few opportunities 
of knowledge. ‘That night we may presume that — 
while they kept guard they were talking about 
their sheep and their prospects at market, and their 
homes and children. 

150 











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The People Who Greeted the Infant Jesus 


There is no sign that they were seekers after 
some new revelation of God. They were not on 
the alert, scanning the midnight skies for a 


_ coming One, or praying that a great hour of un- 


veiling of Deity might be hastened. ‘They were 
ordinary people about their ordinary tasks. 

That is one of the wonderful things about 
spiritual blessedness. Its offers invade men who 
are not seekers. Jesus Himself went out of His 
way to make that plain. When He taught the 
inestimable value of the heavenly treasure, He 
did an unusual thing. He duplicated the parable 
to make this plain. The merchant who gained 
the pearl of great price had been on the quest for 
years, but the discoverer of the hid treasure was 
not a professed treasure-seeker. He just hap- 
pened on it. Our Lord taught that the great 
opportunity may come to those who are not 
seekers. The Shepherds were of that company. 

But they were people of the right stamp— 
humble, biddable, unsophisticated, ready to believe 
and ready to take trouble to test their belief. Just 
as the treasure-seeker sold all, so they were pre- 
pared to do what was needful. They left their 
flocks, and hurried to seek the Child. They 
accepted the token of God’s unexpected and 
special presence. 

There is something akin between the Gospel 


151 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


and the worker. Jesus chose His comrades from 
among fishermen, men of toil; and it was shep- 


herds who were the favoured ones of earth on the | 


first Christmas Day. In the path of honest labour — 
there is a place where God can speak to man. © 


There is nothing artificial about the normal life © 
of a working-man, no invitation to idleness or © 


fastidiousness. He is honestly hungry, right- 
fully weary, helping to get the work of the world 
done. Such are the people to whom Christ can 
make His appeal. 


Are the working people of this land divorced 
from religion? That statement is sometimes © 
made, but it is not true of the country as a whole, — 


and only partially true of half-pagan London, 


In our factory and mining districts, in our large 
cities and the quiet country places, the churches 


ee 


would be almost empty were there no working- — 


folk there. But if any church does not offer 
welcome to the worker and speak to his heart— — 
then that church is deeply in fault. The first — 
tidings of Christ’s coming was given to working- — 


folk. 


And if the workers suffer themselves to be 


severed from Christ, they are going against nature. 
Jesus Christ and the worker are meant for each 


other. His first appeal was to them, and the 


angels sang their herald song to them. Oh, 
152 





The People Who Greeted the Infant Jesus 


workers of England, know your Lord! He is 
your true friend. 


II 


The second group who hailed our Lord’s 
coming were the ‘‘ Wise men of the East.” Who 
were they? Little we know of them, but this is 
clear : they were students who were also seekers, 
These were men on the alert, searching the skies 
and the records, inquiring for the truth of things 
in unfamiliar ways denied to many. ‘They were 
investigators, the scientific men of the time, 
pondering the old, watching for the new. 

They were also venturers, not only refusing 
the closed mind, but also willing to launch on a 
great quest. Imagination was their method as 
well as investigation, They were ready for any 
clue, wherever it might lead them. That is the 
picture of the higher scientific mind, At its best 
it is bold as well as cautious, awake to every 
token of the truth. Otherwise, radium and the 
X-ray and chloroform would not have been 
added to men’s possessions. Routine scientists 
abound. But the best are seekers who are pre- 
pared to make ventures. 

It is also to be noticed that these student- 
venturers did not shut out the possibility of the 
advent of a great Personality who would succour 


153 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


the world. They studied the stars, but they were 
prepared to go to welcome a man who was a 
King. They were wistful, not proud. Their know- 
ledge did not forbid enrichment through faith. 
And they themselves had the princely heart. 
When they went on their long journey, they 
prepared and took gifts with them, and did not 
hesitate to bestow their gifts at a lowly child’s 
cradle. 

Men say that the thinkers have deserted the 
Church. It has never been completely true. It 
is not true to-day. Pascal and Pasteur, Clerk 
Maxwell and Lord Kelvin, all died in the faith 
which is celebrated on Christmas Day. But the 
Church has often failed to welcome the “ wise 
men” and has doubted their gifts. This is one 


a 


—- = 


7. a 


of its heavy shames. It has been afraid of know- — 
ledge, faint-hearted about truth. It has shrunk — 


from the new unfolding of the wonders of God’s — 
earth and sky. The Church has the right to refuse ~ 


to be stampeded. All that professes to be discovery 


is not truth. But the Church must unfailingly — 
believe that all truth is one as God is one. The © 
open mind must be maintained on all questions — 


concerning which there is no unmistakable 


revelation from God. ‘There must be a welcome — 


for the thinkers as well as for the toilers. 


What is the Christian message to the thinkers — 


154 





The People Who Greeted the Infant Jesus 


to-day ? Not that they think too much, but that 
the sphere of their thought is too limited. Not 
that they are too ardent in their quest for truth, 
but that their range is too restricted. With all 
your seeking, the Church cries, miss not the star 
that will lead youon the diviner quest: the guiding 
light which will give you the clue to life and lead 
you to the Lord of life. 

But it is useless to go on the quest unless you 
oe prepared to be humble, to find the greatest of 
\all at once hidden and revealed in a human life; 
to bring yourselves and your gifts to His feet. It 

is written: ‘‘ They fell down and worshipped 
Him : and when they had opened their treasures, 
they presented unto Him gifts.” 

It was harder for the wise men to come than 
for the shepherds. ‘They had a less obvious sign 
to descry, a longer journey to take, and a more 
difficult inquiry to make. But they brought more. 
The shepherds had to come empty-handed. The 
wise men brought their rare and costly gifts: 
“gold, frankincense and myrrh.” It is still the 
same. It is harder for the thinker to find the 
Christ, but when he comes he has more to 


bring. 





III 


There was a third group to greet the infant 
| Jesus. It consisted of those aged, devout people, 


155 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


deeply religious and with a special quality 
in their faith. They “ waited for the consola- 
tion of Israel,” they “looked for the re- 
demption of Jerusalem.’”’ Simeon and Anna 
were the elect of the nation. God had 
whispered in their ear. They knew a great 
deliverer was at hand. Other Jews were excited 
at the thought of the possibility of a Messiah. 
They knew. 


One ponders, then. They were the people — 
‘J with the unconquerable hope, though so 
old. Their expectation came wholly from — 
the Unseen. Their whole life was devotion, — 


prayer, and yet more prayer. Removed 
from earth’s toils and _ struggles, half in 
heaven already, they had developed a rare 


spiritual sensitiveness, an unshakeable religious 


certainty. 


Therefore they were able to recognize the — 
Expected One without a sign. There appeared — 
before them a Jewish artisan and his wife and a © 
babe, a truly human babe. We may imagine — 


unusual beauty in the mother and the child, and 


be justified in our imagination; but beauty was — 
not the sign. There was that in these holy — 


ancients which gave them the power to recognize 
a Saviour. They were the “ confidants of God.” 


A humble coming, an entirely normal human 


156 


f 


4 
. 
g 








The People Who Greeted the Infant Jesus 


life, did not mislead them, though it might 
mislead their contemporaries. 
They all were looking for a King 
To slay their foes and lift them high, 
Thou cam’st a little baby thing 
That made a woman cry. 


No, not “ a// were looking for a King.” God has 
His chosen ones, a special seed-plot of piety. 
They needed neither star nor angel to find their 
Lord. Their hearts knew when He was present 
by the fire that leapt to flame within. 

Their successors are still among us. These 
are people with simple hearts, often unknown 
to fame, whose chief interest is God and 
God’s ways with men. They have the forward 
look, for much intercourse with God creates 
expectancy. To them Christ is akin, and they 
bear witness to what Christ is to be to mankind, 
They keep open the doors whereby God can com- 
municate with men, help us to believe in the 
Unseen, and give us spiritual courage. Wise, very 
wise, they are with the wisdom of the child’s heart 
and the mature mind. 

They cannot argue for their faith, but their 
testimony is unimpeachable and carries a rare 
power of conviction with it. Blessed the Church 
_ which possesses such saints who are also watchers 
for the dawn. 


157 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


IV 


Where can Jesus Christ look for new welcomes 
to-day? He is ever seeking to enter the heart of 
man and to be born anew within each human 
soul. Not to one kind of experience or to one 
type of life does He offer Himself, but to all men. 
To the man of toil, the man of thought, and the 
man of prayer, He comes and brings with Him 
what each man needs. 

The toiler may say: “‘ I have no time to investi- 
gate, and muchis uncertain,” but our Lord suits 
His signs and tokens to our need. Where there is 
an honest and wistful heart, His message can 
come as certainly as the angel-message from the 
skies. But there is a journey of the spirit to be 
taken before certainty is possible. Will the toiler 
say: “ Let us go now even unto Bethlehem ’”’? 

The thinker may find Christ approach him in 
another way. He may say to himself: “I 
cannot easily pray: I must ponder, study, in- 
vestigate. I am staggered by this assertion that 
God became man. It is too great to be easily 
believed.”” But is there no star to lead you, no 
manifestation in your mind to guide you on the 
way? What if it be true that “God grew likest 
God in being born?” Are your eyes towards 
the sky? 


158 





. 


‘ 
A 


The People Who Gréeted the Infant Jesus 


The naturally Christian for whom prayer is 
no effort but a delight, they too can give the 
added welcome on this Christmas Day. Not for 
your lips complaints and repinings, because of the 
blessed past; but the steady testimony; “ Christ 
still comes to men. Silently, surely, He enters in. 
We know.” 

May Our Lord have them all round Him 
to-day, men of every type and taste, brought by 
such diverse ways to the great discovery. 


159 


“ 


ee t ‘ae 
Py Ney 


a 
et 
4 E 
Vere 





NO ROOM 


By Norman Mac ean, D.D. 
Edinburgh, 





“ And Mary brought forth her firstborn son, and 
wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in 
a manger ; because there was no room for them in 
the inn.”’—Luke t. 7. 


No Room 


Ir was not really because there was no room that 
the Holy Mother was shut out from the mean 
inn nineteen centuries ago, for, had they wished, 
the folk that filled its court with gossip and 
revelry could so easily have made room. It is 
difficult for us to enter into the minds of people 
who would have no compassion on a woman in 
the hour of her direst need. That is because 
centuries of Christianity have softened our hearts 
and opened our eyes to the glory and loveliness of 
childhood. This little verse which St. Luke added 
to his gospel, as an author to-day adds a footnote 
to a page, to explain why Jesus was born in a 
manger, visualizes for us the mighty revolution 
this Child has wrought. Before He was laid in 
that manger woman was a mere chattel and 
children were disregarded ; to-day, because the 
Mother held the hope of the world in her arms 
there in the stall) womanhood is everywhere 
honoured, and childhood most precious. It was 
because the world knew not yet the spirit of love 
and compassion, because its heart was not yet 
163 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


touched with pity for the outcast, that Mary and 
Joseph were shut out from the inn. There is an 
old Celtic proverb that says: “* Where there is 
heart-room there also is house-room.” ‘The true 
reason why the Child was born in the grotto 
where the asses were stalled was that there was 
no heart-room that night in Bethlehem. 


I 


There is no footnote in all literature that so 
stirs the mind with a wistful poignancy as this of 
St. Luke’s, It leaps out of the page arrestingly. 
The world, at heart, has not really changed so 
very much in these two thousand years. Human 
nature is very much the same. We can be quite 
certain that had Joseph been able to show that 
inn-keeper a fat wallet stuffed with money there 
would have been room enough made for the 
Mother and the Child. It was because they were 
so desperately poor and so shabby that they were 
shut out. If they only had money ! That was an 
era when Mammon held high sway over the hearts 
of men. And the devotees of that poor god have 
multiplied in our day. | 

The wonderful thing that Christmas does for 
us every year is this: it summons us to go on 
pilgrimage, and therein thestable to realize what 
a poor, tawdry god this Mammon is. The devotees 

164 





No Room 


of Mammon had no welcome for the most beauti- 
ful thing in all the world’s history. And all the life 
of this Jesus was of the same pattern. Mammon 
had never asmile for Him. He knew what it was 
to wear patched garments, and to buy the cheapest 
of all food—two sparrows for a farthing. There 
is no record of His ever giving any money to any- 
one—He had none to give. His place, from the 
hour when there was no room found for Him 
among the respectably clad and the comfortably 
housed to the dark hour when a borrowed grave 
received His poor mangled body at the last, was 
with the disinherited. Out of conditions of dire 
poverty came the world’s enrichment. 

This poor god, Mammon, how difficult a thing 
it is to break loose from his sway. For all these 
centuries Christmas has been pouring the con- 
tempt of heaven upon him, and yet the cry of 
humanity is more than ever after their idol. 
The rich flaunt his worship in the sight of 
masses seething with discontent; and these 
- aforetime silently-enduring people now demand 
their share in the largess of the god. Society 
may perish, but each must have his share! And 
what a god on whose altar to sacrifice a race ! 
He can inspire not one noble thought, nor bestow 
on any starved heart the smallest gift of love. All 
he can bestow is food and clothes and shelter— 

165 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


and a tramp can command the same. And yet the 
world runs after this tawdry god. If it had not 
been for the yearly reminder of the meanness of | 
this Mammon which shut the Child out of 
the inn, the world would have been a complete 
prey to his vulgarity. 

This is a fact which Christendom might ponder 
with great advantage. It is the souls who have 
been cradled in poverty who become the de- 
liverers of the world. A poor miner and his wife 
go toa fair and there, having found refuge in a 
hovel, their child, Martin Luther, was born. In 
all the world that day there could not have been 
any poorer or meaner than these—and yet the 
flame flickered there that was to illumine the world. 
Out of a ploughman’s cot in Haddington came 
John Knox, who brought democracy to the birth 
in the hour in which Queen Mary asked him, 
“Who are you that presume to school the nobles 
and princes of this realm?” and he answered, 
“* Madam, a subject born within thesame.” It was 
when following the ploughthat the spirit of inspira- _ 
tion found the prophet of human equality and — 
brotherhood—Burns. In fact, it is almost always — 
thesame. Whether it bea Shakespeare, a Milton, — 
a Bunyan, a St. Francis, or a Thomas 4 Kempis, ~ 
it is the lives that have been freed from the © 
thralldom of riches and from the enervation of — 

166 








No Room 


luxury who have kindled the fires by whose light 
humanity has marched forward. It seems a 
strange thing, when one remembers these things, 
and when the heart goes back to Bethlehem and 
the eyes behold the Child against whom Mammon 
shut the door, that there should be anyone in this 
land to-day so blind as to bow the knee to so 
tawdry a god. And yet, the weird fact confronts 
us—that the devotees of Mammon have multi- 
plied exceedingly of late. When the soul is 
oppressed by blatant vulgarity, let us go even 
unto Bethlehem and there behold the light which 
was destined to flame over the world revealing to 
the hearts of men the true riches. That is 
deliverance from bondage. 


No words in the Gospels are more prophetic 
of the fate that overtook Christianity than these, 
which tell how Jesus was shut out from the inn 
at His birth. It was the same all through His 
life : He came to His own and His own received 
Him not. It has been the same all through the 
weary centuries. Even when they professed to 
receive Him, the generations of men have shut 
Jesus out. 

We have but to think of the sad history of 

167 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


Christianity to realize how true that is. He pro- 
claimed the most revolutionary truth ever preached 
to men—that slaves and sinners and folk ignorant 
of the law and, therefore, accursed, are all the sons 
of God ; and that the whole of man’s duty lay 
in loving God and loving one another with a love 
red with sacrificial blood. In a world filled with 
hatred He proclaimed the love of one’s enemy ; 
and His own life embodied what He declared. 
Breathing a prayer for His enemies, He dies... . 
Now, what have men done with this evangel of — 
love ? It is no exaggeration to say that they have — 
shut it out. It was too beautiful for their gross _ 
hearts. It was also very difficult, and demanded 
an enormous sacrifice. Before a man can love like 
that, he must be willing to be renewed in the 
whole man—willing to separate himself from 
sense and sin. And yet men wanted to have 
something of the radiance of this Jesus; but 
they wanted it without, the necessity of sacri- 
fice. Jesus demanded the surrendered heart 
and the renewed life ; that was too much. So 
they devised a way of their own. They sub- 
stituted the surrendered brain for the surrendered _ 
heart. They wrote down a record of the greatest — 
event in history and what they remembered of — 
the words spoken in Galilee and Jerusalem, and 
they formulated logical propositions setting forth — 

168 





No Room 


that after this manner God acted; and they 
said : ‘‘ Whosoever does not believe this without 
any doubt he shall perish everlastingly.”. . . 
One has only to listen to Jesus as He says: “ By 
this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if 
ye have love one to another,” and then turn to 
. the formulas by which men have tested disciple- 
ship to realize that the strangest and most 
bewildering of all fates has overtaken Jesus. The 
generations that shouted His name as a war-cry 
shut the door against Himself. They shut Him 
out. They made a tradition out of His spirit and 
His life, and in the name of that tradition went 
on crucifying and slaying each other. The very 
passions which crucified Jesus they conse- 
crated by His name. .... What a _ history 
that has been in which a Borgia sits on the throne 
of St. Peter, in which Tetzel sells indulgences 
that the treasury of the Pope may be filled ; in 
which Christians cheerfully burned one another 
thinking they were doing God service. There is 
only one explanation and that is, that although 
His name was everywhere on men’s lips, yet He 


Himself found no room in their hearts. The 
generations have been at one inthis—that they shut 


the door against Love. They made room for every- 

thing except for Him. Professing to do Him the 

greatest honour, theyslammed the door in His face. 
169 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


And sometimes I wonder whether we have so 
very greatly improved. It is true that we no longer 
cheerfully burn each other with the name of the 
Lord of Love on our lips justifying the deed. 
We, however, do similar things in His name. 
I never read of the enthusiasm evoked by a great 
assemblage who adhere to the same definitions of 
the church and of the sacraments, without a 
queer sense of the littleness of man. It is the 
easiest thing in the world to stir masses of people 
into a red-hot enthusiasm for theories about 
Jesus and about the society He formed, but that 
enthusiasm is not for Jesus Himself. There is 
only one definition of a Christian found in the 
Bible : “‘ If any man have not the spirit of Christ 
he is none of His.’”” And the Spirit of Christ is 
the love of all men, the love that expresses itself 
in service to the utmost. It is the love that saves 
children ; that saves the lost. That red-hot 
enthusiasm for formulas is not the love that 
sacrifices everything to sweep temptation from 
the way of the miserable. It is a grim thought to 
think how hyphenated causes can evoke sacrifice 
for which the Lord Himself appeals in vain. 
One cannot escape the grim conclusion that the 
world is to-day in so parlous a state simply because 
in so large a measure the very Church which He 
founded has so seldom made room for her Lord. 

170 


No Room 


A church with Jesus shut out is the ugliest blot 
on the face of the world. 


Ill 


If in the Church there has often been found no 
room for Jesus, still less has there been found 
room for Him in the social order. At Christmas 
time when the hearts of all folk are made tender 
by the thought of the Child in the manger, it is 
natural to think of how the world treats the 
child. In its attitude to the child we can discern 
its attitude to Jesus ; for Jesus identifies Himself 
so closely with humanity that He declares that 
whosoever receives a little child in His name 
receives Himself. How, then, do we deal with 
Jesus as He comes to us in the form of a little 
child, saying “‘ Receive Me”? This is what we 
do. In our great cities two hundred out of a 
thousand babies perish in the first year of life. 
The conditions which produce that awful massacre 
are manifest to all beholders. In proportion to the 
number of premises licensed by the State in any 
locality is the death-rate among the babies. . . . 
Wars come to an end; this slaughter of the 
innocents never ceases. And many justify these 
conditions in the very name of Jesus ; just as in 
other days they justified slavery in the name of 
Jesus by St. Paul sending Onesimus back to 


171 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


his master. If men are to be judged by what 
they tolerate even more than by what they do, 
then on this our day the judgment will go forth 
that in the organization of the body politic Jesus 
was shut out. There was no room found for Him 
who proclaimed the judgment of the rope and 
the stone on the generation who offended against 
little children. 

It is not merely by this callous indifference to 
the conditions which work the perdition of child- 
hood that we can discern the attitude of the social 
organization to Jesus, but more clearly still by 
the hostility manifested towards the very existence 
of the child. In another age Ruskin declared that 
there is no wealth but life ; to-day the social 
organization conspires to shut the door in the 
face of babies altogether. Property owners are 
now loth to let their houses to tenants with 
children, Even the coming of a baby has brought 
an ejectment warrant. The reward of bringing 
a baby into the world has often been being thrown 
into the streets. The revellers in the inn in 
Bethlehem have been the progenitors of a great 
host. Rents are with them the chief good, and not 
babies. . . . There are to-day shameless adver- 
tisements for gardeners and the like, with the 
words added, “‘ No children.”’ The most extra- 
ordinary advertisement of the kind I ever saw 

172 


Os ee, eS, 


, 
i 
I 
| 








No Room 


was in France in May, 1917, when a copy of 
the Daily Chronicle came into my hands, and in 
that spirit of utter weariness when the eyes glance 
even over advertisements, I read the words: 
“ Chapel keepers, man and wife (no children), for 
large Congregational Church, central London ; 
must be total abstainers . . . 5$ rooms, coal and 
light provided. .” That advertisement 
banished my weariness. I saw that great con- 
gregation hailing with rapture the coming of the 
Child; the preacher with dewy eloquence 
depicting the callousness of the inn frequenters 
in Bethlehem—and their own servant, with five 
rooms, forbidden any room for a child. 
Some ancient prophet spoke of Judgment 
beginning in the House of God. That was the 
sort of thing that must have been in his mind. 
Never was childhood so precious as to-day 
when the race has to recover its dread loss. The 
fact, however, remains that the door is being shut 
by selfishness in the face of the child. With the 
classes, Bridge is more highly esteemed than 
babies. The race is being atrophied by self- 
indulgence, In our day neither John Wesley nor 
Walter Scott would have been born! ‘The 
generation which sacrifices the nursery to the 
garage is a generation which makes no room for 
Jesus in the midst. It shuts Him out. 


eg 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


IV 


The world’s supreme need at this Christmas- 
tide is that room should be made for the Child, 
The world has come nigh to perishing because it 
has made room for everything except the one 
thing needful—that Love which came on Christ- 
mas Day. The need of the world is God, and 
nowhere can that need be satisfied save by the 
coming of the Child. Long years ago St. Chryso- 
stom, speaking of the symbol of God in the Holy 
of Holies between the cherubim, said: ‘‘ The 
true Shekinah is Man.” And that saying is ever 
true. For there is no way by which love can 
manifest itself save through human hearts and 
hands and lips. Personality is the only means by 


which God could manifest the highest in Him, — 


and in the fulness of the time the Child was born 


who was destined to reveal in a life of love that — 
God is Love. Christmas is not the commemora- — 


tion of an isolated fact ; it is the day of all days 
on which we are to realize that the coming of God 


to man in His Holy Spirit is a continuous process, — 


and that we each of us on this day can become 
tabernacles for the indwelling of the Most 
High, 

How shall we induce the world to cease shutting 
out the Child by whom God thus comes ? How 


174 





No Room 


shall we prevail upon men to make room for 
Christ in their lives? It is, I think, by making 
the people realize as never before, how precious 
He is and how all-important that they should 
receive Him. The greatest and most valuable 
thing in all the world is goodness. Let any mother 
have the choice of her son becoming rich and 
successful and yet a rogue, or poor and good, and 
she will instantly choose poverty for him. It is the 
instinctive recognition of life’s true values. The 
witness of nineteen centuries is that there is no 
power on earth that builds up men and women 
in unselfishness and goodness but the power that 
is radiated from Him whose life on earth began 
in a manger. However laden the ship, the captain 
will make room for gold. Iron ore and clay will 
be thrown overboard, if need be, to make room. 
And we must be ready to cast away our costly 
treasures that we may make room. Everywhere 
let us make room. In the cabinet of our statesmen 
that wile and craftiness may no longer desolate 
the earth with the millions slain—that the Prince 
of Peace may guard the frontiers of the world ; 
in our schools that a generation may grow up 
realizing that life’s nobility does not consist in 
what we can get, but what we can give—that the 
glory of manhood is to serve ; in our workshops 
and our factories that duty, and not profit, may 


175 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


become the master-word of life. If we but knew 
where the true treasure of life lay, we would at 
this season open the doors of our hearts and say : 


“Come Lord Jesus ; abide with us for ever.” 


Vv 


The watchword of Christmas—Sursum Corda— 
rings once more in our ears. There is every reason 
why we should lift up our hearts. For nineteen 
centuries men have striven in many and devious 
ways to shut out Christ. They did so by contumely, 
by persecution, and by the more subtle way of 
changing a religion of spiritual renewal into one 
of mental gymnastics. The ways in which the 
door has been shut on Christ are innumerable— 
from the priest who changed love into ritual to 
the puritan who transformed the Sermon on the | 
Mount into a thing of holy groans and pious — 
snuffies—yet it has ever been impossible to shut 
Him wholly out. In the darkest days the Child 
found room in humble homes, and pious mothers 
in the eventide taught their children the wondrous 
story of how love came to earth, and how the Child 
that saved the world was born in a stable. There _ 
never has been a day for all these centuries but life 
has been beautified by Him and death conquered, — 
for hosts no man can number. In all the years 

176 





No Room 


there never was a day when so many people went 
in heart and soul to Bethlehem with a great longing 
in their souls. ‘‘ We have tried every way,” they 
say, ‘‘ and have found no deliverance ; let us try 
the way of Christ—let us make room for Him.” 
And they are making room. They cannot but 
make room. For this Jesus cannot be shut out. 
He is now the Spirit of Divine Love brooding over 
men, and He comes in even through closed doors. 
There are no frontiers that can guard against the 
Spirit ; no locks that can shut Him out. That 
is how the world with all its wiles has not been 
able to destroy Christianity. The Child will 
conquer at the last. He makes room for Himself. 


177 M 





THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD 
A Christmas Study 


By Grorce H. Morrison, D.D. 
Glasgow. 


“ Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is 
with thee : blessed art thou among women.” 


Luke i. 28. 








The Mother of Our Lord 


Amonc all the influences of home there is none 
more powerful than that of motherhood. It is 
the moulding and inspiring force in tender and 
impressionable years. ‘‘ The hand that rocks 
the cradle rules the world.” In that bold line 
there is a deal of truth. The mother’s shadow 
falling across the cradle is a shadow of blessing or 
of woe. When the eyes are opening, when the 
heart is softest, when the little will is yet unformed 
—what a tremendous influence the mother wields. 
There comes a time with the advance of years 
when the impress of the father is determinative. 
The strength and masculine energy of fatherhood 
will be needed then to guide and to control. But 
in the opening days, when the child is but a babe 
—when life is fresh, and when the world is 
wonderful—it is the love of motherhood more 
than that of fatherhood that interprets and con- 
veys the love of God. 

Now, if that be so with every infant you may be 
certain it was so with Jesus. All that a mother 
ever meant for you, ‘hat His. mother must have 
meant for Him. He was born of a woman— 

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Advent and Christmas Sermons 


made under the law. Did you ever link these 
words together? Is not the first law we know in 
life the gentle and controlling law of motherhood ? 
And so our Lord, who on the cross of Calvary 
fulfilled the eternal law of God for us, began by 
obedience to the law of motherhood. He was as 
helpless, He was as dependent, as any other 
little babe in Nazareth, He hung upon His 
mother’s breast as really as afterwards He hung 
upon the Cross. And how He was moulded in 
these childish years by the love and sweetness and 
patience of His mother we shall never under- 
stand, in allits fullness, till we cast our crowns down 
at His feet. How could we better spend our 
Christmas Sunday, then, than by thinking for a 
little about Mary? It is thus that we can join 
the angel song, “Hail, thou that art highly 
favoured among women.” What do we know 
of her, what can we learn of her, as we read the 
simple tale of the evangelist? It is on that I 
should like to speak. 

I think the chief thing to impress us about 
Mary is just the obscurity in which she walks. 
The days and months and years go hurrying by, 
and of Mary there is scarce a trace. ‘That our 
Lord had never ceased to love her tenderly we 
know from that memorable moment at the Cross. 
Amid the agonies of that last hour He saw her : 

182 





The Mother of Our Lord 


“Woman, behold thy son—behold thy mother.” 
And yet, though He had never ceased to love her, 
and she had never ceased to love her son, she lives 
and moves and loves behind a veil. Is it not 
often so in human life? The things that are 
dearest are the hidden things. The hands that bless 
us and the hearts that pray for us are hands and 
hearts of which the world knows nothing. Happy 
the life with a background such as that, where 
there is someone always true and loving, someone 
whose influence is not less real because it is 
hidden from the prying eye. Wordsworth has 
written with infinite contempt of the man who 
would peep and botanize upon his mother’s grave. 
And a mother’s love is like a mother’s grave— 
it is too sacred for the light of day. And that is 
why Mary in her perfect motherhood is never 
flaunted on the Gospel page, but moves behind a 
veil and in obscurity. When one thinks of the 
place that has been given to Mary in the worship 
of the Roman Catholic Church ; when one thinks 
of her exalted and conspicuous—the queen of 
heaven, the celestial rose—one feels that the 
charm of motherhood is gone. ‘That public 
throne is not a mother’s throne. That glittering 
crown is not a mother’s crown. Motherhood 
on earth is not like that ; neither is perfected 
motherhood in heaven. All the splendour and 
183 


all 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


show of mariolatry is not half so true to what we 
know of motherhood as is the sweet obscurity of 
Scripture. 

And yet if we were to think that this obscurity 
were the penalty of lack of gifts or character— 
if we were to think of Mary as a characterless 
woman, we should be utterly untrue to Scripture. 
Mary was a woman of a very beautiful character, 
a woman of a most uncommon nature. There 
are people of whom you would never hear, though 
they had the ancestry of David; people pre- 
destined to obscurity as others are predestined to 
renown. But whatever the virgin was she was 
not that—she was a woman of most uncommon 
gifts ; with all her quietness she had a strength 
of character which has got itself written upon the 
Gospel page. Think of the journey she took to 
see her cousin. It was a toilsome and a perilous 
journey. For a young betrothed maiden such 
as she was, it was a course of action without 
precedent. For a Jewish maiden when she was 
betrothed was not expected to go much abroad ; 
she was expected to stay modestly at home. 
Here was a woman, then, who had the gift of 
courage, and with the gift of courage she had the 
gift of song. Many a mother has the gift of song; 
Mary had it in pre-eminence. Here was one of 
those rare and rounded natures that not only 

184 


The Mother of Our Lord 


meet life’s difficulties bravely, but set the diffi- 
culties of the day to music. Two things always 
impress me in our Lord: the one is His courage, 
the other is His poetry. Christ was unfalteringly 
brave, and yet He was a poet to His finger-tips. 
And it tells us how perfectly He was a human 
child, drawing His human life from her who bore 
Him, when these are the qualities we find in Mary. 
A woman who could act as Mary acted—a 
woman who could sing as Mary sang—had 
energy and gifts to make her famous had she any 
desire to be famous. But Mary had no desire to 
be famous. She did not want to be the queen 
of heaven. She wanted to be the mother and the 
queen of her little growing family at Nazareth. 

Now a woman who could so obliterate herself 
must have been a woman of singular humility. 
And there are several traces in the narrative that 
confirm the humility of Mary. Think, for 
instance, of the Annunciation. There is a picture 
of the Annunciation, by Rossetti, which I suppose 
many of you have seen. In it Mary is cowering 
away, and there is a look of terror in her eyes. 
But the greatest painters, like Angelico, never 
paint her with a look like that. They paint her 
as if she never thought of self at all. Think of 
the words that came welling from her heart 
when she knew she was to be the mother of 
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Advent and Christmas Sermons 


Messiah. In a single moment she was lifted up 
into pre-eminence and immortality. Yet the one 
thought that rises in her heart is not that she shall 
be worshipped or admired—“all generations,” she 
says, “shall call me d/essed.”” She did not want to 
be great or to be beautiful—she had no selfish 
ambitions of that kind. She did not want to 
have the praise of men, or to be the attraction of 
a million eyes. Mary’s one passion was to be 
a blessing—Mary’s one thought that filled her 
heart with song was that to weary men and 
burdened women the world would be different 
when Christ was born. A woman who could so 
forget herself was a woman of a singular humility. 
You will not find her often in the Gospels. She 
will do nothing to attract attention. For the 
truest humility is not humiliation, nor any abject 
disparagement of self. It is never to think about 
oneself at all. 

That being so, we are prepared to learn that 
Mary was of a meditative nature. Luke tells us 
twice, as if to fix our thoughts upon it, that she 
kept things quiet in her heart. Once when the 
shepherds came with their amazing tidings of the 
chorus of angels in the sky at Bethlehem ; once 
when the Boy had been lost and then was found 
in eager converse with the Temple doctors, Luke 
tells us how Mary kept it in her heart—laid it up 

186 


a 


The Mother of Our Lord 


there as a secret thing—never breathed a word of 
it to anybody. Clearly a woman who had the gift 
of silence as truly as she had the gift of song; a 
woman who knew that there are things you 
tarnish the moment you begin to speak of them ; 
a woman who set a guard upon her lips—felt that, 
without its secret, life was poor—recognized 
the indignity of gossiping. ‘There are mothers 
who can talk of nothing but their children. Mary 
was not a mother of that kind. With the most 
wonderful child that ever woman nursed, she was 
silent about him, and held her peace in Nazareth. 
She dreamed her dreams, and had her own sweet 
thoughts, and prayed to God and had her cradle- 
music—and all the time she kept things in her 
heart. The beautiful thing is that as her son 
grew up, He showed so evidently His mother’s 
influence. You talk of the power of speech our 
Saviour had—have you ever thought of His power 
of keeping silence? And it seems to me that the 
reserve of Christ, which added to His authority 
so mightily, goes back, like His love of the flowers 
and of the birds, to the days of boyhood in the 
village home. There is many a son you will 
never understand unless you know something of 
his mother. ‘Traits of his character—little com- 
punctions—tendernesses—it is the mother who 
explains them all. And so in the perfect character 
187 


Advent and Christmas Sermons 


of Christ are traits that you can never understand 
till you remember the motherhood of Mary. 
When I see Him standing before Pilate ; when 
I find Him refusing to say a single word ; when — 
I think how often He was urged to speak and how ~ 
often he refused to speak ; it is then this text 
comes back to me out of the happy days of home 
and childhood: “ Mary kept all these things 
within her heart.” 

i here is another glimpse we get of the Virgin- 
mother, and we get it in the song she sang. There 
is one feature of that song you note at once. It 
is not merely a welling-up of praise ; it is a song 
that is steeped in the Old Testament. The 
words are scarcely Mary’s words at all ; they are 
from the treasury of psalmist and of prophet. 
“My soul doth magnify the Lord ’’—that long 
ago had been the cry of Hanna. “ He hath 
shewed strength with His arm’”’—that is not 
Mary’s, it is David’s.. And there are words of — 
Job, in the Magnificat, and thoughts taken from ~ 
the song of Moses, and golden utterances of — 
Isaiah. That does not mean that Mary was a 
plagiarist. It does not mean that for that tumul- 
tuous hour she scanned the pages of psalmist and — 
of prophet. It means that Mary had a heart so 
full of all that was written in the Word of God, 
that in that hour it came welling to her lips. Upon 

188 











The Mother of Our Lord 


the Bible she had fed her heart. She had lived 
in the fellowship of all its noble teaching, In 
maiden meditation, fancy free, she had turned to 
the glorious heritage of Israel. In the quiet and 
unrecorded years of girlhood she had prayed and 
studied in the light of heaven, and now the witness 
of the years was in her speech. Is not that one 
mark of our great hours? Do they not reveal 
the life we have been living? Do they not show 
what we have loved or hated in the hidden days 
when there was none to see? And so in this 


| great hour of Mary’s life, when she is lifted into 


the gaze of all the world, the past that stands 
revealed to all the world is one of beautiful and 
earnest piety. No need to ask now where Our 


Lord was taught these ancient Scriptures that He 


loved so truly. With sucha mother, whose heart 
and life were full of them, we can understand the 
secret now. That wonderful knowledge of 
prophet and of psalmist that was the sword of 
Jesus as it was His stay, began in the teaching at 
His mother’s knee, 

I close by asking you if you remember what is 


the last glimpse we get of Mary? It is one of 


the most beautiful touches in the Scriptures. It 
is not an appearance of the risen Christ to her, 
for we never read that He appeared to Mary. It 
is not a vision of her as the queen of heaven, for 
2 189 


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she is never mentioned in the Revelations. It is 
something far more womanly than that ; some- — 
thing far more human and more tender. After 


Jesus had ascended into glory we read of a little 
company who gathered in Jerusalen.—in the upper 
room, to pray. And that is the last glimpse we get 
of Mary—for the Apostle tells us she was there— 
and so in prayer she passed out of sight. Not 
reigning on any heavenly throne, not wielding 
any authority with Christ, not lifted up in any 
queenly dignity with the universe worshipping 
the Mother of God. But a woman—praying— 


like any other sinner, whose only hope of power — 
and peace and glory lay in the work that ended on © 
the Cross. It is with that last thought we think © 
of Mary. It is thus that she, too, leads us to the - 
Saviour. For all her wonderful ministry to — 


Christ, we love her, and adore the hand that chose 
her. And then like her, in prayer, we turn to 
Him by Whom we live, in Whom we hope to die; 
Whose is the only Name given among men 
whereby we must be saved, 


190 











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